The bodies sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon:

Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,

Mars yren, Mercurie quik-silver we clepe,

Saturnus leed and Jupiter is tin,

And Venus coper, by my fader kin!

Literature of Alchemy.--A considerable body of Greek chemical

writings is contained in MSS. belonging to the various great

libraries of Europe, the oldest being that at St Mark's, just

mentioned. The contents of these MSS. are all of similar

composition, and in Berthelot's opinion represent a collection

of treatises made at Constantinople in the 8th or 9th

century. The treatises are nearly all anterior to the 7th

century, and most appear to belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries;

some are the work of authentic authors like Zosimus and

Synesius, while of others, such as profess to be written by

Moses, Democritus, Ostanes, &c., the authorship is clearly

fictitious. Some of the same names and the same works can

be identified in the lists of the Kitab-al- Fihrist. But

the Arabs did not acquire their knowledge of this literature

at first hand. The earliest Hellenic culture in the East was

Syrian, and the Arabs made their first acquaintance with

Greek chemistry, as with Greek philosophy, mathematics,

medicine, &c., by the intermediary of Syriac translations.

(See ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY and SYRIAC LITERATURE.) Examples

of such translations are preserved in MSS. at the British

Museum, partly written in Syriac, partly in Arabic with Syriac

characters. In Berthelot's opinion, the Syriac portions

represent a compilation of receipts and processes undertaken in

the Syrian school of medicine at Bagdad under the Abbasids in

the 9th or 10th century, and to a large extent constituted by

the earlier translations made by Sergius of Resaena in the 6th

century. They contain, under the title Doctrine of Democritus,

a fairly methodical treatise in ten books comprising the

Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia of the pseudo-Democritus,

with many receipts for colouring metals, making artificial

precious stones, effecting the diplosis or doubling of

metals, &c. They give illustrations of the apparatus employed,

and their close relationship to the Greek is attested by

the frequent occurrence of Greek words and the fact that

the signs and symbols of the Greek alchemists appear almost

unchanged. The other portion seems of somewhat later date.

Another Syriac MS., in the library of Cambridge University,

contains a translation of a work by Zosimus which is so far

unknown in the original Greek. Berthelot gives reproductions

of the British Museum MSS. in vol. ii. of La Chimie au moyen

Several alchemistical treatises, written in Arabic, exist

in manuscript in the National Library at Paris and in the

library of the university of Leiden, and have been reproduced

by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie

au moyen age. They fall into two groups: those in one are

largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while

those in the other have rather the character of original

compositions. Of the first group the most interesting and

possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remarkable

for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the

Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of

apparatus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek

MSS., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found

in other Arabic MSS. Its concluding words suggest that its

production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 708), who

was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to

the Kitab-al-Fihrist was the first Mussulman writer on

alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises

professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy

as Geber (q.v..) Internal evidence suggests that they are not

all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they

are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the 12th century.

The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers

on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.

But the further development of alchemy took place in the West

rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire

to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek

medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed,

strengthened by the infusion of a certain Jewish element, to

the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin

translations. The making of these began about the 11th

century, one of the earliest of the translators, Constantinus

Africanus, wrote about 1075, and another, Gerard of Cremona,

lived from 1114 to 1187. The Liber de compositione alchemiae,

which professes to be by Morienus--perhaps the same as the

Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid--was translated by

Robertus Castrensis, who states that he finished the work in

1182, and speaks as if he were making a revelation--``Quid

sit alchemia nondum cognovit vestra Latinitas.'' The earlier

translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other

Works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam

chemiam vocant (1572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and

J. J. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), are

confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but

full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek

alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek

alchemy. They were followed by treatises of a different

character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement,

and reflecting the methods of the scholastic logic; these are

farther from the Greek tradition, for although they contain

sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ancestry, their

authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek

names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek

treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course

of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of

them, even when pretending to be translations, are really

original compositions. It is curious that although we possess

a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and

also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from

Arabic, yet in no case is the existence known of both the

Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as

contained in MSS. at Paris and Leiden, are quite Aissimiiar

from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any

traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid

(aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric

and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that

appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in

fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the

13th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance their

authority. If this view be accepted, an entirely new light

is thrown on the achievements of the Arabs in the history of

chemistry. Gibbon asserts that the Greeks were inattentive

either to the use or to the abuse of chemistry (Decline and

Fall, chap. xiii.), and gives the Arabs the credit of the

origin and improvement of the science (chap. lii.).2 But

the chemical knowledge attributed to the Arabs has been so

attributed largely on the basis of the contents of the Latin

Geber, regarded as a translation from the Arabic Jaber. If,

then, those contents do not represent the knowledge of Jaber,

and if the contents of other Latin translations which there

is reason to believe are really made from the Arabic, show

little, if any, advance on the knowledge of the Alexandrian

Greeks, evidently the part played by the Arabs must be less, and

that of the Westerns greater, than Gibbon is prepared to admit.

The descent of alchemistical doctrine can thus be traced

with fair continuity for a thousand years, from the Greeks

of Alexandria down to the time when Latin alchemy was

firmly established in the West, and began to be written

of by historical authors like Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon

and Arnoldus Villanovanus in the 13th century. But side

by side with this literary transmission Berthelot insists

that there was another mode of transmission, by means of the

knowledge of practical receipts and processes traditional

among jewellers, painters, workers in glass and pottery, and

other handicraftsmen. The chemical knowledge of Egyptian

metallurgists and jewellers, he holds, was early transmitted

to the artisans of Rome, and was preserved throughout the

dark ages in the workshops of Italy and France until about

the 13th century, when it was mingled with the theories of

the Greek alchemists which reached the West by way of the

Arabs. Receipts given in the Leiden papyrus reappear in

the Compositiones ad Tingenda and the Mappae Clavicula,

both workshop receipt books, one known in an 8th-century

MS. at Lucca, and the other in a 10th-century MS. in the

library of Schlettstadt; and again in such works as the De

Artibus Romanorum of Eraclius and the Schedula Diversarum

Artium of Theophilus, belonging to the 11th or 12th century.

Theory of Transmutation.--The fundamental theory of the

transmutation of metals is to be found in the Greek alchemists,

although in details it was modified and elaborated by the

Arabs and the Latin alchemists. Regarding all substances as

being composed of one primitive matter--the prima materia,

and as owing their specific differences to the presence of

different qualities imposed upon it, the alchemist hoped, by

taking away these qualities, to obtain the prima materia

itself, and then to get from it the particular substance he

desired by the addition of the appropriate qualities. The

prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary

mercury, but the ``mercury of the philosophers,'' which was the

essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian

elements--earth, air, fire and water--or rather from the

qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to

remove from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or

quality, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by

taking away air or a volatile principle. The prima materia

thus obtained had to be treated with sulphur (or with sulphur

and arsenic) to confer upon it the desired qualities that were

missing. This sulphur again was not ordinary sulphur, but some

principle derived from it, which constituted the philosopher's

stone or elixir--white for silver and yellow or red for

gold. This is briefly the doctrine that the metals are

composed of mercury and sulphur, which persisted in one form

or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were

numerous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum

Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) it is said that

there are four spirits--mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal

ammoniac-- and six bodies--gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and

iron.3 Of these bodies the two first are pure, the four last

impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white

non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which

fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red

sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure

mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. Vincent

attributes to Rhazes the statement that copper is potentially

silver, and any one who can eliminate the red colour will

bring it to the state of silver, for it is copper in outward

appearance, but in its inmost nature silver. This statement

represents a doctrine widely held in the 13th century, and

also to be found in the Greek alchemists, that everything

endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden

opposite quality, which can be rendered apparent by fire.

Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur,

mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals.

It must be noted that the processes described by the alchemists

of the 13th century are not put forward as being miraculous

or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by

nature, which it is the end of the alchemist's art to reproduce

artificially in the laboratory. But even among the late

Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether the resources of

the art were adequate to the task; and in the West, Vincent of

Beauvais remarks that success had not been achieved in making

artificial metals identical with the natural ones. Thus he

says that the silver which has been changed into gold by the

projection of the red elixir is not rendered resistant to the

agents which affect silver but not gold, and Albertus Magnus

in his De Mineralibus --the De Alchemia attributed to him

is spurious--states that alchemy cannot change species but

merely imitates them--for instance, colours a metal white to

make it resemble silver or yellow to give it the appearance of

gold. He has, he adds, tested gold made by alchemists, and

found that it will not withstand six or seven exposures to

fire. But scepticism of this kind was not universal. Roger

Bacon--or more probably some one who usurped his name--declared

that with a certain amount of the philosopher's stone he could

transmute a million times as much base metal into gold, and

on Raimon Lull was fathered the boast, ``Mare tingerem si

mercurius esset.'' Numerous less distinguished adepts also

practised the art, and sometimes were so successful in their

deceptions that they gained the ear of kings, whose desire

to profit by the achievements of science was in several

instances rewarded by an abundant crop of counterfeit coins.

Later History of Alchemy.--In the earlier part of the

16th century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by

declaring that its true object was not the making of gold but

the preparation of medicines, and this union of chemistry with

medicine was one characteristic of the iatrochemical school

of which he was the precursor. Increasing attention was paid

to the investigation of the properties of substances and of

their effects on the human body, and chemistry profited by

the fact that it passed into the hands of men who possessed

the highest scientific culture of the time, Still, belief

in the possibility of transmutation long remained orthodox,

even among the most distinguished men of science. Thus it

was accepted, at least academically, by Andreas Libavius (d.

1616); by F. de la Boe Sylvius (1614-1672), though not by

his pupil Otto Tachenius, and by J. R. Glauber (1603-1668);

by Robert Boyle (1627-1691) and, for a time at least, by Sir

Isaac Newton and his rival and contemporary, G. W. Leibnitz

(1646-1716); and by G. E. Stahl (1660-1734) and Hermann Boerhaave

(1668-1738). Though an alchemist, Boyle, in his Sceptical

Chemist (1661), cast doubts on the ``experiments whereby

vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their salt,

sulphur and mercury to be the true principles of things,''

and advanced towards the conception of chemical elements

as those constituents of matter which cannot be further

decomposed. With J. J. Becher (1635-1682) and G. E. Stahl,

however, there was a reversion to earlier ideas. The former

substituted for the salt, sulphur and mercury of Basil

Valentine and Paracelsus three earths--the mercurial, the

vitreous and the combustible--and he explained combustion

as depending on the escape of this last combustible element;

while Stahl's conception of phlogiston--not fire itself,

but the principle of fire--by virtue of which combustible

bodies burned, was a near relative of the mercury of the

philosophers, the soul or essence of ordinary mercury.

Perhaps J. B. van Helmont (1577-1644) was the last distinguished

investigator who professed actually to have changed mercury

into gold, though impostors and mystics of various kinds

continued to claim knowledge of the art long after his

time. So late as 1782, James Price, an English physician,

showed experiments with white and red powders, by the aid

of which he was supposed to be able to transform fifty

and sixty times as much mercury into silver and gold. The

metals he produced are said to have proved genuine on assay;

when, however, in the following year he was challenged to

repeat the experiments he was unable to do so and committed

suicide. In the course of the 19th century the idea that

the different elements are constituted by different groupings

or condensations of one primal matter--a speculation which,

if proved to be well grounded, would imply the possibility

of changing one element into another--found favour with

more than one responsible chemist; but experimental research

failed to yield any evidence that was generally regarded as

offering any support to this hypothesis. About the beginning

of the 20th century, however, the view was promulgated

that the spontaneous production of helium from radium may

be an instance of the transformation of one element into

another. (See RADIOACTIVITY; also ELEMENT and MATTER.)

See M. P. E. Berthelot, Les Origines de l'alchimie (1885);

Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (text and

translation, 3 vols., 1887-1888); Introduction a l'etude de

la chimie des anciens et du moyen age (1889): La Chimie au

moyen age (text and translation of Syriac and Arabic treatises

on alchemy, 3 vols., 1893). Much bibliographical and other

information about the later writers on alchemy is contained

in Bibliotheca Chemica (2 vols., Glasgow, 1906), a catalogue

by John Ferguson of the books in the collection of James

Young of Kelly (printed for private distribution). (H. M. R.)

1 An alchemistical work bearing the name of Ostanes

speaks of a divine water which cures all maladies--an early

appearance of the universal panacea or elixir of life.

2 ``Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the

temples and monasteries of Egypt: much useful experience might

have been acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures,

but the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement

to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented

and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation,

analyzed the substances of the three kingdoms of nature,

tried the distinction and affinities of alkalis and acids,

and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary

remedies. But the most eager search of Arabian chemistry

was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal

health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were

evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation

of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of mystery,

fable and superstition.'' It may be noted that the word

``alembic'' is derived from the Greek ambix, ``cup,''

with the Arabic article prefixed, and that the instrument

is figured in the MSS. of some of the Greek alchemists.

3 Cf. Chaucer, Chanouns Yemannes Tale, where,

however, mercury figures both as a spirit and a body:--

``The firste spirit quik-silver called is,

The second orpiment, the thridde ywis

Sal armoniak, and the ferthe brimstoon.''

ALCIATI, ANDREA (1492-1550), Italian jurist, was born at

Alzano, near Milan, on the 12th of January 1492. He displayed

great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was

one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history,

languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original

research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He

published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus.

His Emblems, a collection of moral sayings in Latin verse, has

been greatly admired, and translated into French, Italian and

Spanish. Alciati's history of Milan, under the title Rerum

Potriae, seu Historiae Mediolanensis, Libri IV., was published

posthumously at Milan in 1625. He died at Pavia in 1550.

ALCIBIADES (c. 450-404 B.C.), Athenian general and

politician, was born at Athens. He was the son of Cleinias and

Deinomache, who belonged to the family of the Alcmaeonidae.

He was a near relative of Pericles, who, after the death

of Cleinias at the battle of Coroneia (447), became his

guardian. Thus early deprived of his father's control, possessed

of great personal beauty and the heir to great wealth, which

was increased by his marriage, he showed himself self-willed,

capricious and passionate, and indulged in the wildest freaks

and most insolent behaviour. Nor did the instructors of

his early manhood supply the corrective which his boyhood

lacked. From Protagoras, Prodicus and others he learnt to

laugh at the common ideas of justice, temperance, holiness and

patriotism. The laborious thought, the ascetic life of his

master Socrates, he was able to admire, but not to imitate or

practise. On the contrary, his ostentatious vanity, his amours,

his debaucheries and his impious revels became notorious.

But great as were his vices, his abilities were even greater.

He took part in the battle of Potidaea (432), where his

life was saved by Socrates, a service which he repaid at

the battle of Delium (424). As the reward of his bravery,

the wealthy Hipponicus bestowed upon him the hand of his

daughter. From this time he took a prominent part in Athenian

politics during the Peloponnesian war. Originally friendly to

Sparta, he subsequently became the leader of the war party in

opposition to Nicias, and after the peace of 421 he succeeded

by an unscrupulous trick in duping the Spartan ambassadors,

and persuading the Athenians to conclude an alliance (420) with

Argos, Elis and Mantineia (Thuc. v. 56, 76). On the failure

of Nicias in Thrace (418-417) he became the chief advocate

of the Sicilian expedition, seeing an opportunity for the

realization of his ambitious projects, which included the

conquest of Sicily, to be followed by that of Peloponnesus

and possibly of Carthage (though this seems to have been an

afterthought). The expedition was decided upon with great

enthusiasm, and Alcibiades, Nicias and Lamachus were appointed

joint commanders. But, on the day before the expedition

sailed, there occurred the mysterious mutilation of the Hermae,

and Alcibiades was accused not only of being the originator

of the crime, but also of having profaned the Eleusinian

mysteries. His request for an immediate investigation being

refused, he was obliged to set sail with the charge still

hanging over him. Almost as soon as he reached Sicily

he was recalled to stand his trial, but he escaped on the

journey home and made his way to Sparta. Learning that he

had been condemned to death in his absence and his property

confiscated, he openly joined the Spartans, and persuaded

them to send Gylippus to assist the Syracusans and to

fortify Decelea in Attica. He then passed over to Asia

Minor, prevailed upon many of the Ionic allies of Athens to

revolt, and concluded an alliance with the Persian satrap

Tissaphernes. But in a few months he had lost the confidence

of the Spartans, and at the instigation of Agis II., whose

personal hostility he had excited, an order was sent for his

execution. Receiving timely information of this order he

crossed over to Tissaphernes (412), and persuaded him to

adopt the negative policy of leaving Athens and Sparta to

wear themselves out by their mutual struggles. Alcibiades

was now bent on returning to Athens, and he used his supposed

influence with Tissaphernes to effect his purpose. He entered

into negotiations with the oligarch Peisander, but when these

led to no result he attached himself to the fleet at Samos

which remained loyal to the democracy, and was subsequently

recalled by Thrasybulus, although he did not at once return to

Athens. Being appointed commander in the neighbourhood of the

Hellespont, he defeated the Spartan fleet at Abydos (411)

and Cyzicus (410), and recovered Chalcedon and Byzantium.

On his return to Athens after these successes he was welcomed

with unexpected enthusiasm (407); all the proceedings against

him were cancelled, and he was appointed general with full

powers. His ill success, however, at Andros, and the

defeat at Notium (407) of his lieutenant Antiochus, led the

Athenians to dismiss him from his command. He thereupon

retired to the Thracian Chersonesus. After the battle of

Aegospotami, and the final defeat of Athens, he crossed

the Hellespont and took refuge with Pharnabazus in Phrygia,

with the object of securing the aid of Artaxerxes against

Sparta. But the Spartans induced Pharnabazus to put him out

of the way; as he was about to set out for the Persian court

his residence was set on fire, and on rushing out on his

assassins, dagger in hand, he was killed by a shower of arrows

(404). There can be no doubt that his advice to Sparta in

connexion with Syracuse and the fortification of Decelea

was the real cause of his country's downfall, though it is

only fair to him to add that had he been allowed to continue

in command of the Sicilian expedition he would undoubtedly

have overruled the fatal policy of Nicias and prevented the

catastrophe of 413. His belated attempt to repair his fatal

treachery only exposed the essential selfishness of his

character. Though he must have known that his influence

over the Persian satraps was slender in the extreme, he

used it with the most flagrant dishonesty as a bait first to

Sparta, then to the Athenian oligarchs, and finally to the

democracy. Superficial and opportunist to the last, he

owed the successes of his meteoric career purely to personal

magnetism and an almost incredible capacity for deception.

There are lives of Alcibiades by Plutarch and Cornelius

Nepos, and monographs by Hertzberg, A. der Staatsmann

und Feldherr (1833), and Houssaye, Histoire d'Alcibiade

(1873); but the best accounts will be found in the histories

of Greece by G. Grote (also notes in abridged ed., 1907),

Ed. Meyer, and works quoted under GREECE, Ancient

History, sect. ``Authorities''; also PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

ALCIDAMAS, of Elaea, in Aeolis, Greek sophist and rhetorician,

flourished in the 4th century B.C. He was the pupil and

successor of Gorgias and taught at Athens at the same time

as Isocrates, whose rival and opponent he was. We possess

two declamations under his name: Peri Sofiston, directed

against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore

over written speeches (a recently discovered fragment of

another speech against Isocrates is probably of later date);

'Odusseus, in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes of treachery

during the siege of Troy (this is generally considered

spurious). According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the

orator was the power of speaking extempore on every conceivable

subject. Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 3) criticizes his writings

as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use

of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors.

Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived:

Messeniakos, advocating the freedom of the Messenians and

containing the sentiment that ``all are by nature free'';

a Eulogy of Death, in consideration of the wide extent of

human sufferings; a Techne or instruction-book in the art

of rhetoric; and a Fusikos lolos. Lastly, his Mouseion

(a word of doubtful meaning) contained the narrative of the

contest between Homer and Hesiod, two fragments of which are

found in the 'Agon `Omerou kai `Esiodou, the work of

a grammarian in the time of Hadrian. A 3rd-century papyrus

(Flinders Petrie, Papyri, ed. Mahaffy, 1891, pl. xxv.) probably

contains the actual remains of a description by Alcidamas.

See the edition by Blass, 1881; fragments in Muller,

Oratores Attici, ii. (1858); Vahlen, Der Rhetor

Alkidamas (1864); Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit.

ALCINOUS (ALKINOOS), in ancient Greek legend, king of

the fabulous Phaeacians, in the island of Scheria, was the

son of Nausithous and grandson of Poseidon. His reception

and entertainment of Odysseus, who when cast by a storm on

the shore of the island was relieved by the king's daughter,

Nausicaa, is described in the Odyssey (vi.-xiii.). The

gardens and palace of Alcinous and the wonderful ships of

the Phaeacian mariners were famous in antiquity. Scheria was

identified in very early times with Corcyra, where Alcinous

was reverenced as a hero; In the Argonautic legend, his

abode was the island of Drepane (Apoll. Rhodius iv. 990).

ALCINOUS, the Platonic philosopher, lived probably in the

time of the Caesars. He was the author of an 'Epitome

ton Platonos dogmaton, an analysis of Plato's philosophy

according to later writers. It is rather in the manner of

Aristotle, and freely attributes to Plato any ideas of other

philosophers which appeared to contribute to the system. He

produced in the end a synthesis of Plato and Aristotle with an

admixture of Pythagorean or Oriental mysticism, and is closely

allied to the Alexandrian school of thought. He recognized

a God who is unknowable, and a series of beings (daimones)

who hold intercourse with men. He recognized also Ideas and

Matter, and borrowed largely from Aristotle and the Stoics.

The 'Epitome has been translated by Pierre Balbi

(Rome, 1469) and by Marsilio Ficino; into French by J. I.

Combes-Dounous (Paris, 1800), and into English by Thomas

Stanley in his History of Philosophy. Editions: Heinsius

(Leiden, 1630); Fischer (Leipzig, 1783); in Aldine Edition

of Apuleius (Venice, 1521; Paris, 1532); Fell (Oxford,

1667). See Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, iv. 249.

ALCIONIO, PIETRO, or PETRUS ALCYONIUS (c. 1487-1527),

Italian classical scholar, was born at Venice. After having

studied Greek under Marcus Musurus of Candia, he was employed

for some time by Aldus Manutius as a corrector of the press,

and in 1522 was appointed professor of Greek at Florence

through the influence of Giulio de' Medici. When his patron

became pope in 1523 under the title of Clement VII., Alcionio

followed him to Rome and remained there until his death.

Alcionio published at Venice, in 1521, a Latin translation

of several of the works of Aristotle, which was shown by the

Spanish scholar Sepulveda to be very incorrect. He wrote a

dialogue entitled Medices Legatus, sive de Exilio (1522),

in connexion with which he was charged with plagiarism by

his personal enemy, Paulus Manutius. The accusation, which

Tiraboschi has shown to be groundless, was that he had taken

the finest passages in the work from Cicero's lost treatise

De Gloria, and had then destroyed the only existing copy of

the original in order to escape detection. His contemporaries

speak very unfavourably of Alcionio, and accuse him of

haughtiness, uncouth manners, vanity and licentiousness.

ALCIPHRON, Greek rhetorician, was probably a contemporary of

Lucian (2nd century A.D..) He was the author of a collection

of fictitious letters, of which 124 (118 complete and 6

fragments) have been published; they are written in the purest

Attic dialect and are considered models of style. The scene

is throughout at Athens; the imaginary writers are country

people, fishermen, parasites and courtesans, who express

their sentiments and opinions on familiar subjects in elegant

language. The ``courtesan'' letters are especially valuable,

the information contained in them being chiefly derived

from the writers of the New Comedy, especially Menander.

EDITIONS.--Editio princeps (44 letters), 1499;

Bergler (1715); Seiler (1856); Hercher (1873); Schepers

(1905). English translation by Monro and Beloe (1791).

ALCIRA, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia;

on the left bank of the river Jucar, and on the Valencia-

Alicante railway. Pop. (1900) 20,572. Alcira is a walled

town, surrounded by palm, orange and mulberry groves, and by

low-lying rice-swamps, which render its neighbourhood somewhat

unhealthy. Silk, fruit and rice are its chief products.

It is sometimes identified w;th the Roman Saetabicula. In

the middle ages it was a prosperous Moorish trading-station.

ALCMAEON, of Argos, in Greek legend, was the son of Amphiaraus

and Eriphyle. When his father set out with the expedition

of the Seven against Thebes, which he knew would be fatal

to him, he enjoined upon his sons to avenge his death by

slaying Eriphyle and undertaking a second expedition against

Thebes. After the destruction of Thebes by the Epigoni,

Alcmaeon carried out his father's injunctions by killing

his mother, as a punishment for which he was driven mad

and pursued by the Erinyes from place to place. On his

arrival at Psophis in Arcadia, he was purified by its king

Phegeus, whose daughter Arsinoe (or Alphesiboea) he married,

making her a present of the fatal necklace and the peplus of

Harmonia. But the land was cursed with barrenness, and the

oracle declared that Alcmaeon would never find rest until he

reached a spot on which the sun had never shone at the time

he slew his mother. Such a spot he found at the mouth of

the river Achelous, where an island had recently been formed

by the alluvial deposit; here he settled and, forgetting

his wife Arsinoe, married Callirrhoe, the daughter of the

river-god. His new wife longed for the necklace and peplus,

and Alcmaeon, returning to Psophis, obtained possession of

them, on the pretence that he desired to dedicate them at

Delphi. When the truth became known he was pursued and

slain by Phegeus and his sons. After his death Alcmaeon was

worshipped at Thebes; his tomb was at Psophis in a grove of

cypresses. His story was the subject of an old epic and

of several tragedies, but none of these has been preserved.

Homer, Odyssey xv. 248; Apollodorus iii. 7; Thucydides ii, 68,

102; Pausanias viii. 24, x. 10; Ovid, Metam. ix. 400 et seq.

ALCMAEONIDAE, a noble Athenian family, claiming descent

from Alcmaeon, the great-grandson of Nestor, who emigrated

from Pylos to Athens at the time of the Dorian invasion of

Peloponnesus. During the archonship of an Alcmaeonid Megacles

(? 632 B.C.), Cylon, who had unsuccessfully attempted to

make himself ``tyrant''' was treacherously murdered with his

followers. The curse or pollution thus incurred was frequently

in later years raked up for political reasons; the Spartans

even demanded that Pericles should be expelled as accursed at

the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. All the members of

the family went into banishment, and having returned in the

time of Solon (594) were again expelled (538) by Peisistratus

(q.v..) Their great wealth enabled them during their exile

to enhance their reputation and secure the favour of the

Delphian Apollo by rebuilding the temple after its destruction

by fire in 548. Their importance is shown by the fact that

Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, gave his daughter Agariste

in marriage to the Alcmaeonid Megacles in preference to all

the assembled suitors after the undignified behaviour of

Hippocleides. Under the statesman Cleisthenes (q.v.), the

issue of this union, the Alcmaeonids became supreme in Athens

about 510 B.C. To them was generally attributed (though

Herodotus disbelieves the story--see GREECE, Ancient

History, sect. ``Authorities,'' II.) the treacherous raising

of the shield as a signal to the Persians at Marathon,

but, whatever the truth of this may be, there can be little

doubt that they were not the only one of the great Athenian

families to make treasonable overtures to Persia. Pericles

and Alcibiades were both connected with the Alcmaeonidae.

Nothing is heard of them after the Peloponnesian war.

See Herodotus vi. 121-131.

ALCMAN, or ALCMAEON (the former being the Doric form

of the name), the founder of Doric lyric poetry, to whom

was assigned the first place among the nine lyric poets

of Greece in the Alexandrian canon, flourished in the

latter half of the 7th century B.C. He was a Lydian of

Sardis, who came as a slave to Sparta, where he lived in

the family of Agesidas, by whom he was emancipated. His

mastery of Greek shows that he must have come very early to

Sparta, where, after the close of the Messenian wars, the

people were able to bestow their attention upon the arts of

peace. Alcman composed various kinds of poems in various

metres; Parthenia (maidens' songs), hymns, paeans, prosodia

(processionals), and love-songs, of which he was considered the

inventor. He was evidently fond of good living, and traces

of Asiatic sensuousness seem out of place amidst Spartan

simplicity. The fragments are scanty, the most considerable

being part of a Parthenion found in 1855 on an Egyptian

papyrus; some recently discovered hexameters are attributed

to Alcman or Erinna (Oxyrhynchus papyri, i. 1898).

For general authorities see ALCAEUS.

ALCMENE, in ancient Greek mythology, the daughter of

Electryon, king of Mycenae, and wife of Amphitryon. She

was the mother of Heracles by Zeus, who assumed the likeness

of her husband during his absence, and of Iphicles by

Amphitryon. She was regarded as the ancestress of the

Heracleidae, and worshipped at Thebes and Athens.

See Winter, Alkmene und Amphitryon (1876).

ALCOBACA, a town of Portugal, in the district of Leiria,

formerly included in the province of Estremadura, on the Alcoa

and Baca rivers, from which it derives its name. Pop. (1900)

2309. Alcobaca is chiefly interesting for its Cistercian

convent, now partly converted into schools and barracks.

The monastic buildings, which form a square 725 ft. in

diameter, with a huge conical chimney rising above them, were

founded in 1148 and completed in 1222. During the middle

ages it rivalled the greatest European abbeys in size and

wealth. It was supplied with water by an affluent of the

Alcoa, which still flows through the kitchen; its abbot

ranked with the highest Portuguese nobles, and, according

to tradition, 999 monks continued the celebration of mass

without intermission throughout the year. The convent was

partly burned by the French in 1810, secularized in 1834

and afterwards gradually restored. Portions of the library,

which comprised over 100,000 volumes, including many precious

MSS., were saved in 1810, and are preserved in the public

libraries of Lisbon and Braga. The monastic church (1222) is

a good example of early Gothic, somewhat defaced by Moorish

and other additions. It contains a fine cloister and the

tombs of Peter I. (1357-1367) and his wife, Inez de Castro.

ALCOCK, JOHN (c. 1430-1500), English divine, was born at

Beverley in Yorkshire and educated at Cambridge. In 1461 he was

made dean of Westminster, and henceforward his promotion was rapid

in church and state. In the following year he was made master

of the rolls, and in 1470 was sent as ambassador to the court of

Castile. He was consecrated bishop of Rochester in 1472 and was

successively translated to the sees of Worcester (1476) and Ely

(1486). He twice held the office of lord chancellor, and

exhibited great ability in the negotiations with James III. of

Scotland. He died at Wisbech Castle on the 1st of October

1500. Alcock was one of the most eminent pre-Reformation

divines; he was a man of deep learning and also of great

proficiency as an architect. Besides founding a charity

at Beverley and a grammar school at Kingston-upon-Hull, he

restored many churches and colleges; but his greatest enterprise

was the erection of Jesus College, Cambridge, which he

established on the site of the former Convent of St Radigund.

Alcock's published writings, most of which are extremely

rare, are: Mons Perfectionis, or the Hill of Perfection

(London, 1497); Gallicontus Johannis Alcock episcopi

Eliensis ad frates suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell

(1498), a good specimen of early English printing and quaint

illustrations; The Castle of Labour, translated from the French

(1536), and various other tracts and homilies. See J. Bass

Mullinger's Hist. of the University of Cambridge, vol. i.

ALCOCK, SIR RUTHERFORD (1809-1897), British consul and

diplomatist, was the son of Dr Thomas Alcock, who practised

at Ealing, near London, and himself followed the medical

profession. In 1836 he became a surgeon in the marine

brigade which took part in the Carlist war, and gaining

distinction by his services was made deputy inspector-general

of hospitals. He retired from this service in 1837, and

seven years later was appointed consul at Fuchow in China,

where, after a short official stay at Amoy, he performed the

functions, as he himself expressed it, ``of everything from

a lord chancellor to a sheriff's officer.'' Fuchow was one

of the ports opened to trade by the treaty of 1842, and Mr

Alcock, as he then was, had to maintain an entirely new position

with the Chinese authorities. In so doing he was eminently

successful, and earned for himself promotion to the consulate at

Shanghai. Thither he went in 1846 and made it an especial

part of his duties to superintend the establishment, and

laying out of the British settlement, which has developed

into such an important feature of British commercial life in

China. In 1858 he was appointed consul-general in the newly

opened empire of Japan, and in the following year was promoted

to be minister plenipotentiary. In those days residence in

Japan was surrounded with many dangers, and the people were

intensely hostile to foreigners. In 1860 Mr Alcock's native

interpreter was murdered at the gate of the legation, and

in the following year the legation was stormed by a body

of Ronins, whose attack was repulsed by Mr Alcock and his

staff. Shortly after this event he returned to England on

leave. Already he had been made a C.B. (1860); in 1862 he

was made a K.C.B., and in 1863 hon. D.C.L. Oxon. In 1864

he returned to Japan, and after a year's further residence

he was transferred to Pekin, where he represented the British

government until 1871, when he retired. But though no longer

in official life his leisure was fully occupied. He was

for some years president of the Royal Geographical Society,

and he served on many commissions. He was twice married,

first in May 1841 to Henrietta Mary, daughter of Charles

Bacon, who died in 1853, and secondly (July 8, 1862) to the

widow of the Rev. John Lowder, who died on the 13th of March

1899. He was the author of several works, and was one of the

first to awaken in England an interest in Japanese art; his

best-known book is The Capital of the Tycoon, which appeared in

1863. He died in London on the 2nd of November 1897. (R. K. D.)

ALCOFORADO, MARIANNA (1640-1723), Portuguese authoress,

writer of the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, was the daughter

of a landed proprietor in Alemtejo. Beja, her birthplace,

was the chief garrison town of that province, itself the

principal theatre of the twenty-eight years' war with Spain

that followed the Portuguese revolution of 1640, and her

widowed father, occupied with administrative and military

commissions, placed Marianna in her childhood in the wealthy

convent of the Conception for security and education.

She made her profession as a Franciscan nun at sixteen or

earlier, without any real vocation, and lived a routine

life in that somewhat relaxed house until her twenty-fifth

year, when she met Noel Bouton. This man, afterwards marquis

de Chamilly, and marshal of France, was one of the French

officers who came to Portugal to serve under the great captain,

Frederick, Count Schomberg, the re-organizer of the Portuguese

army. During the years 1665-1667 Chamilly spent much of his

time in and about Beja, and probably became acquainted with

the Alcoforado family through Marianna's brother, who was a

soldier. Custom then permitted religious to receive and entertain

visitors, and Chamilly, aided by his military prestige and some

flattery, found small difficulty in betraying the trustful

nun. Before long their intrigue became known and caused a

scandal, and to avoid the consequences Chamilly deserted Marianna

and withdrew clandestinely to France. The letters to her

lover which have earned her renown in literature were written

between December 1667 and June 1668, and they described the

successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which she

passed. As a piece of unconscious psychological self-analysis,

they are unsurpassed; as a product of the Peninsular heart

they are unrivalled. These five short letters written by

Marianna to ``expostulate her desertion'' form one of the few

documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion

which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its

heat. Perhaps their dominant note is reality, and, sad reading

as they are from the moral standpoint, their absolute candour,

exquisite tenderness and entire self-abandonment have excited

the wonder and admiration of great men and women in every

age, from Madame de Sevigne to W. E. Gladstone. There are

signs in the fifth letter that Marianna had begun to conquer

her passion, and after a life of rigid penance, accompanied

by much suffering, she died at the age of eighty-three. The

letters came into the possession of the comte de Guilleragues,

director of the Gazette de France, who turned them into

French, and they were published anonymously in Paris in January

1669. A Cologne edition of the same year stated that Chamilly

was their addressee, which is confirmed by St Simon and Duclos,

but the name of their authoress remained undivulged. In 1810,

however, Boissonade discovered Marianna's name written in a copy

of the first edition by a contemporary hand, and the veracity

of this ascription has been placed beyond doubt by the recent

investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition

in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese

nun. The letters created a sensation on their first appearance,

running through five editions in a year, and, to exploit

their popularity, second parts, replies and new replies were

issued from the press in quick succession. Notwithstanding

that the Portuguese original of the five letters is lost,

their genuineness is as patent as the spuriousness of their

followers, and though Rousseau was ready to wager they were

written by a man, the principal critics of Portugal and France

have decided against him. It is now generally recognized that

the letters are a verbatim translation from the Portuguese.

The foreign bibliography of the Letters, containing almost

one hundred numbers, will be found in Cordeiro's admirable

study, Soror Marianna, A Friera Portugueza, 2nd ed. (Lisbon,

1891). Besides the French editions, versions exist in Dutch,

Danish, Italian and German; and the English bibliography is

given by Edgar Prestage in his translation The Letters of

a Portuguese Nun (Marianna Alcoforado), 3rd ed. (London,

1903). The French text of the editio princeps was printed

in the first edition (1893) of this book. Edmund Gosse in

the Fortnightly Review, vol. xlix. (old series) p. 506,

shows the considerable influence exercised by the Letters on

the sentimental literature of France and England. (E. PR.)

ALCOHOL, in Commerce, the name generally given to ``spirits

of wine''; in systematic organic chemistry it has a wider

meaning, being the generic name of a class of compounds

(hydroxy hydrocarbons) of which ordinary alcohol (specifically

ethyl alcohol) is a typical member (see ALCOHOLS.)

Etymology.

The word ``alcohol'' is of Arabic origin, being derived

from the particle al and the word kohl, an impalpable

powder used in the East for painting the eyebrows. For many

centuries the word was used to designate any fine powder; its

present-day application to the product of the distillation

of wine is of comparatively recent date. Thus Paracelsus

and Libavius both used the term to denote a fine powder, the

latter speaking of an alcohol derived from antimony. At

the same time Paracelsus uses the word for a volatile liquid;

alcool Or alcool vini occurs often in his writings, and

once he adds ``id est vino ardente.'' Other names have

been in use among the earlier chemists for this same liquid.

Eau de vie (``elixir of life'') was in use during the 13th

and 14th centuries; Arnoldus Villanovanus applied it to the

product of distilled wine, though not as a specific name.

Ethyl alcohol.

Ordinary alcohol, which we shall frequently refer to by its

specific name, ethyl alcohol, seldom occurs in the vegetable

kingdom; the unripe seeds of Heracleum giganteum and H.

Sphondylium contain it mixed with ethyl butyrate. In the

animal kingdom it occurs in the urine of diabetic patients and

of persons addicted to alcohol. Its important source lies in

its formation by the ``spirituous'' or ``alcoholic fermentation''

of saccharine juices. The mechanism of alcoholic fermentation

is discussed in the article FERMENTATION, and the manufacture

of alcohol from fermented liquors in the article SPIRITS.

The qualitative composition of ethyl alcohol was ascertained by

A. L. Lavoisier, and the quantitative by N. T. de Saussure in

1808. Sir Edward Frankland showed how it could be derived

from, and converted into, ethane; and thus determined it

to be ethane in which one hydrogen atom was repiaced by a

hydroxyl group. Its constitutional formula is therefore

CH3.CH2.OH. It may be synthetically prepared by any

of the general methods described in the article ALCOHOLS.

Pure ethyl alcohol is a colourless, mobile liquid of an agreeable

odour. It boils at 78.3 deg. C. (760 mm.); at -90 deg. C. it

is a thick liquid, and at -130 deg. it solidifies to a white

mass. Its high coefficient of thermal expansion, coupled with

its low freezing point, renders it a valuable thermometric

fluid, especially when the temperatures to be measured are

below -39 deg. C., for which the mercury thermometer cannot be

used. It readily inflames, burning with a blue smokeless flame,

and producing water and carbon dioxide, with the evolution of

great heat; hence it receives considerable application as a

fuel. It mixes with water in all proportions, the mixing

being attended by a contraction in volume and a rise in

temperature; the maximum contraction corresponds to a mixture

of 3 molecules of alcohol and 1 of water. Commercial alcohol

or ``spirits of wine'' contains about 90% of pure ethyl

alcohol, the remainder being water. This water cannot be

entirely removed by fractional distillation, and to prepare

anhydrous or ``absolute'' alcohol the commercial product

must be allowed to stand over some dehydrating agent, such as

caustic lime, baryta, anhydrous copper sulphate, &c., and then

distilled. Calcium chloride must not be used, since it forms

a crystalline compound with alcohol. The quantity of alcohol

present in an aqueous solution is determined by a comparison

of its specific gravity with standard tables, or directly by

the use of an alcoholometer, which is a hydrometer graduated so

as to read per cents by weight (degrees according to Richter)

or volume per cents (degrees according to Tralles). Other

methods consist in determining the vapour tension by means

of the vaporimeter of Geissler, or the boiling point by the

ebullioscope. In the United Kingdom ``proof spirit'' is

defined as having a specific gravity at 51 deg. of 12/13 (.92308)

compared with water at the same temperature. The ``quantity

at proof'' is given by the formula:-- quantity of sample

X (degrees over or under proof + 100) divided by 100.

The presence of water in alcohol may be detected in several

ways. Aqueous alcohol becomes turbid when mixed with

benzene, carbon disulphide or paraffin oil; when added to

a solution of barium oxide in absolute alcohol, a white

precipitate of barium hydroxide is formed. A more delicate

method consists in adding a very little anthraquinone and

sodium amalgam; absolute alcohol gives a green coloration,

but in the presence of minute traces of water a red coloration

appears. Traces of ethyl alcohol in solutions are detected

and estimated by oxidation to acetaldehyde, or by conversion

into iodoform by warming with iodine and potassium hydroxide.

An alternative method consists in converting it into ethyl

benzoate by shaking with benzoyl chloride and caustic soda.

Alcohol is extensively employed as a solvent; in fact,

this constitutes one of its most important industrial

applications. It dissolves most organic compounds, resins,

hydrocarbons, fatty acids and many metallic salts, sometimes

forming, in the latter case, crystalline compounds in which

the ethyl alcohol plays a role similar to that of water of

crystallization. This fact was first noticed by T. Graham, and,

although it was at first contradicted, its truth was subsequently

confirmed. In general, gases dissolve in it more readily

than in water; 100 volumes of alcohol dissolve 7 volumes of

hydrogen, 25 volumes of oxygen and 16 volumes of nitrogen.

Reactions.

Potassium and sodium readily dissolve in ethyl alcohol

with the production of alcoholates of the formula C2 H5

OK(Na). These are voluminous white powders. Sulphuric acid

converts it into ethyl sulphuric acid (see ETHER, and sulphur

trioxide gives carbyl sulphate. The phosphorous haloids

give the corresponding ethyl haloid. Ethyl chloride (from

the phosphorus chlorides and alcohol) is an ethereal liquid

boiling at 12.5 deg. C., soluble in alcohol, but sparingly so in

water. Oxidation of ethyl alcohol gives acetaldehyde

and acetic acid. Chlorine oxidizes it to acetaldehyde,

and under certain conditions chloral (q.v.) is formed.

Industrial alcohol.

In almost all countries heavy taxes are levied on manufactured

alcohol mainly as a source of revenue. In the United Kingdom

the excise duty is eleven shillings per proof gallon of alcohol,

while the customs duty is eleven shillings and fivepence; the

magnitude of these imposts may be readily understood when one

remembers that the proof gallon costs only about sevenpence to

manufacture. The great importance of alcohol in the arts has

necessitated the introduction of a duty-free product which is

suitable for most industrial purposes, and at the same time

is perfectly unfit for beverages or internal application.

Methylated spirit.

In the United Kingdom this ``denaturized'' alcohol is known

as methylated spirit as a distinction from pure alcohol or

``spirits of wine.'' It was first enacted in 1855 that methylated

spirit, a specific mixture of pure alcohol and wood- naphtha,

should be duty-free; the present law is to be found in the

Customs and Inland Revenue Act of 1890, and the Finance Act

(sect. 8) of 1902. From 1858 to 1861 methylated spirit was

duty-free when it was required for manufacturing processes,

and the methylation or ``denaturizing'' was carried out in

accordance with a prescribed process. During the next three

decades (1861-1891) the law was extended, and methylated spirit

was duty-free for all purposes except for use as beverages and

internal medicinal applications. This spirit (``unmineralized

methylated spirit'') consisted of 90 parts of alcohol of

60-66 over-proof (91-95% of pure alcohol) and 10 parts of

wood-naphtha. It was found, however, that certain classes

were addicted to drinking this mixture, and since 1891 the

sale of such spirit has been confined to manufacturers who

must purchase it in bulk from the ``methylators.'' For retail

purposes the ``ordinary'' methylated spirit is mixed with .357%

of mineral naphtha, which has the effect of rendering it quite

undrinkable. The Finance Act of 1902 allows a manufacturer to

obtain a license which permits the use of duty-free alcohol,

if he can show that such alcohol is absolutely essential for

the success of his business, and that methylated spirit is

unsuitable. Notwithstanding this permission there have

been many agitations on the part of chemical manufacturers

to obtain a less restricted use of absolute alcohol, and

in 1905 an Industrial Alcohol Committee was appointed to

receive evidence and report as to whether any modification

of the present law was advisable. In the United States

the same question was considered in 1896 by a Joint Select

Committee on the use of alcohol in the manufactures and arts.

Reference should be made to the reports of these committees

for a full account of the use, manufacture and statistics

of ``denaturized'' spirits in various European countries.

In Germany, the use of duty-free spirit is only allowed to state

and municipal hospitals, and state scientific institutions,

and for the manufacture of fulminates, fuzes and smokeless

powders. The duty-free ``denaturized'' spirits may be

divided into two groups--``completely denaturized'' and

``incompletely denaturized.'' In the first category there

are two varieties:--(1) A mixture of 100 litres of spirit and

2 1/2 litres of a mixture of 4 parts of wood-naphtha and 1 of

pyridine bases; this spirit, the use of which is practically

limited to heating and lighting purposes, may be mixed with 50

grs. of lavender or rosemary, in order to destroy the noxious

odour of the pyridine bases. (2) A mixture of 100 litres of

spirit, 1 1/4 litres of the naphtha-pyridine mixture described

above, 1/4 litre of methyl violet solution, and from 2 to

20 litres of benzol; this fluid is limited to combustion

in motors and agricultural engines. The second category,

or ``incompletely denaturized'' spirits, include numerous

mixtures. The ``general'' mixture consists of 100 litres of

spirit, and 5 litres of wood spirit or 1/2 litre of pyridine.

Of the ``particular'' varieties, we can only notice those used

in the colour industry. These consist of 100 litres of spirit

mixed with either 10 litres of sulphuric ether, or 1 litre of

benzol, or 1/2 litre of turpentine, or .025 litre of animal oil.

The German regulations are apparently based on a keen appreciation

of the fact that while one particular denaturizing agent may

have little or no effect on one industry, yet it would be

quite fatal to the success of another; there is consequently

a great choice of denaturizing agents, and in certain cases

it is sufficient to mix the alcohol with a reagent necessary

for the purpose in hand, or even with a certain amount

of the final product, it being only necessary to satisfy

the state that the spirit is not available as a beverage.

In France, the general denaturizing agent is wood-spirit of

at least 58 over-proof, and containing 25% of acetone and

2.5% of ``impurites pyrogenees''; 10 litres of this spirit

denaturizes 100 litres of alcohol. This mixture is supplied

to manufacturers and corresponds to the British unmineralized

methylated spirit; but the regulations are more stringent. When

sold for lighting and heating purposes, it is further admixed

with 0.5% of heavy benzene boiling at 150 deg. -200 deg. C. Provisions

are also made for special denaturizing processes as in Germany.

In America the internal revenue tax on denaturized alcohol

(formerly duty-free only to scientific institutions)

was removed by Congress in 1906 (act of June 7th).

Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics of Alcohol.--

Alcohol is of great medicinal value as a solvent, being

used to form solutions of alkaloids, resins, volatile oils,

iodoform, &c. In strength of about 10% and upwards it is an

antiseptic. If applied to the skin it rapidly evaporates,

thereby cooling the skin and diminishing the amount of sweat

excreted. This refrigerant and anhidrotic action is employed to

soothe many forms of headache by bathing the forehead with eau de

Cologne. If, on the other hand, the alcohol be rubbed into the

skin, or if its evaporation be prevented--as by a watch-glass--it

absorbs water from the tissues and thus hardens them.

Thoroughly rubbed into the skin alcohol dilates the blood-

vessels and produces a mild counter-irritant effect. Many

alcoholic liniments are therefore employed for the relief of

pain, especially muscular pains, as in lumbago and other forms

of so-called ``muscular rheumatism.'' Given internally in

small quantities and in sufficient dilution, alcohol causes

dilatation of the gastric blood-vessels, increased secretion

of gastric juice, and greater activity in the movements of

the muscular layers in the wall of the stomach. It also tends

to lessen the sensibility of the stomach and so may relieve

gastric pain. In a 50% solution or stronger--as when neat

whisky is taken--alcohol precipitates the pepsin which is

an essential of gastric digestion, and thereby arrests this

process. The desirable effects produced by alcohol on

the stomach are worth obtaining only in cases of acute

diseases. In chronic disease and in health the use of

alcohol as an aid to digestion is without the support of

clinical or laboratory experience, the beneficial action

being at least neutralized by undesirable effects produced

elsewhere. The continued use of large doses of alcohol produces

chronic gastritis, in which the continued irritation has led

to overgrowth of connective tissue, atrophy of the gastric

glands and permanent cessation of the gastric functions.

A single dose of concentrated alcohol (e.g. brandy) produces

very valuable reflex effects, the heart beating more rapidly and

forcibly, and the blood-pressure rising. Hence the immediately

beneficial effect produced in the cases of ``fainting'' or

syncope. After absorption, which is very rapid, alcohol

exerts a marked action upon the blood. The oxygen contained

in that fluid, and destined for consumption by the tissues,

is retained by the influence of alcohol in its combination

with the haemoglobin or colouring matter of the red blood

corpuscles. Hence the diminished oxidation of the tissues,

which leads to the accumulation of unused fat and so to the

obesity which is so often seen in those who habitually take

much alcohol. The drug exerts a noteworthy action upon the

body-temperature. As it dilates the blood-vessels of the

skin it increases the subjective sensation of warmth. The

actual consequence, however, is that more heat than before

is necessarily lost from the surface of the body. Alcohol

also diminishes the oxidation which is the main source of the

body-heat. It follows that the drug is an antipyretic, and

it is hence largely used in fevers as a means of reducing the

temperature. This reduction of the temperature, carried to an

undesirable extreme, is the reason why the man who has copiously

consumed spirits ``to keep out the cold'' is often visited with

pneumonia. The largest amount of alcohol that can be burnt up

within the healthy body in twenty-four hours is 1 1/2 oz., but

it must be consumed in great dilution and divided into small

doses taken every four hours. Otherwise the alcohol will for

the most part leave the body unused in the urine and the expired

air. In fever the case is different. The raised temperature

appears to facilitate the oxidation of the substance, so that

quantiries may be taken and completely utilized which would

completely intoxicate the individual had his temperature been

normal. It follows that alcohol is a food in fever, and its

value in this regard is greatly increased by the fact that

it requires no primary digestion, but passes without changes,

and without needing change, to the tissues which are to use

it. According to Sir Thomas Fraser nothing else can compete

with alcohol as a food in desperate febrile cases, and to

this use must be added its antipyretic power already explained

and its action as a soporific. During its administration in

febrile cases the drug must be most carefully watched, as its

action may prove deleterious to the nervous system and the

circulation in certain classes of patient. The state of the

pulse is the best criterion of the action of alcohol in any

given case of fever. The toxicology of alcohol is treated

in other articles. It includes acute alcoholism (i.e.

intoxication), chronic alcoholism, delirium tremens, and

all the countless pathological changes--extending to every

tissue but the bones, and especially marked in the nervous

system-- which alcohol produces. (See DRUNKENNESS: DELIRIUM.)

After death the presence of alcohol can be detected in all the body

fluids. Its especial affinity for the nervous system is indicated

by the fact that, when all traces of it have disappeared elsewhere,

it can still be detected with ease in the cerebro-spinal fluid.

ALCOHOLS, in organic chemistry, a class of compounds which may

be considered as derived from hydrocarbons by the replacement of

one or more hydrogen atoms by hydroxyl groups. It is convenient

to restrict the term to compounds in which the hydroxyl group is

attached to an aliphatic residue; this excludes such compounds

as the hydroxy-benzenes, naphthalenes, &c., which exhibit many

differences from the compounds derived from the aliphatic alkyls.

Alcohols are classified on two distinct principles, one depending

upon the number of hydroxyl groups present, the other on the

nature of the remaining groups attached to the carbon atom which

carries the hydroxyl group. Monatomic or monohydric alcohols

contain only one hydroxyl group; diatomic, two, known as glycols

(q.v.); triatomic, three, known as glycerols (q.v.); and so on.

The second principle leads to alcohols of three distinct

types, known as primary, secondary and tertiary. The genesis

and formulation of these types may be readily understood by

considering the relation which exists between the alcohols

and the parent hydrocarbon. In methane, CH4, the hydrogen

atoms are of equal value, and hence only one alcohol,

viz. CH3OH, can be derived from it. This compound,

methyl alcohol, is the simplest primary alcohol, and it is

characterized by the grouping .CH2OH. Ethane, C2H6, in

a similar manner, can only give rise to one alcohol, namely

ethyl alcohol, CH3CH2OH, which is also primary. Propane,

CH3CH2CH3, can give rise to two alcohols --a primary

alcohol, CH3CH2CH2OH (normal propyl alcohol), formed

by replacing a hydrogen atom attached to a terminal carbon

atom, and a secondary alcohol, CH3.CH(OH).CH3 (isopropyl

alcohol), when the substitution is effected on the middle carbon

atom. The grouping CH.OH characterizes the secondary alcohols;

isopropyl alcohol is the simplest member of this class.

Butane, C4H10, exists in the two isomeric forms--normal

butane, CH3.CH2.CH2.CH3, and iso-butane, CH(CH3)3.

Each of these hydro-carbons gives rise to two alcohols:

n-butane gives a primary and a secondary; and iso-butane a

primary, when the substitution takes place in one of the

methyl groups, and a tertiary, when the hydrogen atom of the

:CH group is substituted. Tertiary alcohols are thus seen to

be characterized by the group :C.OH, in which the residual

valencies of the carbon atom are attached to alkyl groups.

In 1860 Hermann Kolbe predicted the existence of secondary and

tertiary alcohols from theoretical considerations. Regarding

methyl alcohol, for which he proposed the name carbinol, as

the simplest alcohol, he showed that by replacing one hydrogen

atom of the methyl group by an alkyl residue, compounds of the

general formula R.CH2.OH would result. These are the primary

alcohols. By replacing two of the hydrogen atoms, either

by the same or different alkyls, compounds of the formula

(R.R1)CH.OH (i.e. secondary alcohols) would result; while

the replacement of the three hydrogen atoms would generate

alcohols of the general formula (R.R1.R2)C.OH, i.e.

tertiary alcohols. Furthermore, he exhibited a comparison

between these three types of alcohols and the amines. Thus:--

R.NH2 (R1R2)NH (R1R2R3)N

R.CH2OH (R1R2)CH.OH (R1R2R3)C.OH

Primary. Secondary. Tertiary.

To distinguish Priinary, Secondary and Tertiary Alcohols.--

Many reactions serve to distinguish these three types of

alcohols. Of chief importance is their behaviour on oxidation.

The primary alcohols are first oxidized to aldehydes (q.v.),

which, on further oxidation, yield acids containing the same

number of carbon atoms as in the original alcohol. Secondary

alcohols yield ketones q.v.), which are subsequently

oxidized to a mixture of two acids, Tertiary alcohols yield

neither aldehydes nor ketones, but a mixture of two or more

acids. Another method is based upon the different behaviour

of the corresponding nitro-alkyl with nitrous acid. The

alcohol is first acted upon with phosphorus and iodine, and

the resulting alkyl iodide is treated with silver nitrite,

which gives the corresponding nitro-alkyl. The nitro-alkyl is

then treated with potassium nitrite dissolved in concentrated

potash, and sulphuric acid is added. By this treatment a

primary nitro-alkyl yields a nitrolic acid, the potassium

salt of which forms an intense red solution; a secondary

nitro-alkyl forms a pseudo nitrol, which gives an intense blue

solution, while the tertiary compound does not act with nitrous

acid. The reactions outlined above may be thus represented:--

//NOH

R.CH2OH --> R.CH2I --> R.CH2.NO2 --> R.C<

Primary alcohol. \NO2

Nitrolic acid.

R\ R\ R\ /NO2

>CH.OH --> >CH.I --> >CH.NO2 --> >C<

R1/ R1/ R1/ \NO

Secondary alcohol. Pseudo nitrol.

(R1R2R3)C.OH --> (R1R2R3)C.I --> (R1R2R3)C.NO2

Tertiary alcohol.

By heating to the boiling point of naphthalene (218 deg. ) tertiary

alcohols are decomposed, while heating to the boiling point of

anthracene (360 deg. ) suffices to decompose secondary alcohols, the

primary remaining unaffected. These changes can be followed out by

determinations of the vapour density, and so provide a method for

characterizing alcohols (see Compt. Rend. 1904, 138, p. 984).

Preparation.

Alcohols may be readily prepared from the corresponding alkyl

haloid by the action of moist silver oxide (which behaves as

silver hydroxide): by the saponification of their esters; or

by the reduction of polyhydric alcohols with hydriodic acid,

and the subsequent conversion of the resulting alkyl iodide

into the alcohol by moist silver oxide. Primary alcohols

are obtained by decomposing their sulphuric acid esters (from

sulphuric acid and the olefines) with boiling water; by the

action of nitrous acid on primary amines; or by the reduction

of aldehydes, acid chlorides or acid anhydrides. Secondary

alcohols result from the reduction of ketones; and from the

reaction of zinc alkyls on aldehydes or formic acid esters.

/C2H5 /C2H5

CH3CHO --> CH3.CH< --> CH3.CH<

\OZnC2H5 \OH

Acetaldehyde. Methyl ethyl carbinol.

//O /OZnCH3 /CH3 /CH3

HC</ --> HC<-CH3 --> R.C<-OZnCH3 --> R.C<-OH

\OC2H5 \Cl \CH3 \CH3

Formic ester. Isopropyl alcohol.

Tertiary alcohols may be synthesized by a method devised

by A. Butlerow in 1864, who thus discovered the tertiary

alcohols. By reacting with a zinc alkyl (methyl or ethyl) on

an acid chloride, an addition compound is first formed, which

decomposes with water to give a ketone. If, however, a second

molecule of a zinc alkyl be allowed to react, a compound is

formed which gives a tertiary alcohol when decomposed with water.

//O /CH3 /CH3 /CH3

R.C</ --> R.C<-OZnCH3 --> R.C<-OZnCH3 --> R.C<-OH

\Cl \Cl \CH3 \CH3

Acid chloride. Tertiary alcohol.

It is interesting to note that, whereas zinc methyl and ethyl

give tertiary alcohols, zinc propyl only gives secondary

alcohols. During recent years (1900 onwards) many brilliant

syntheses have been effected by the aid of magnesium-alkyl-haloids.

Properties.

The alcohols are neutral in reaction, and the lower members

possess the property of entering into combination with salts, in

which the alcohol plays the role of water of crystallization.

Sodium or potassium dissolves in them with the formation of

alcoholates, the hydrogen of the hydroxyl group being replaced by

the metal. With strong acids water is split off and esters are

formed. The haloid esters of the paraffin alcohols formed by

heating the alcohols with the halogen acids are the monohaloid

derivatives of the paraffins, and are more conveniently

prepared by the action of the phosphorous haloid on the

alcohol. Energetic dehydration gives the olefine hydrocarbons,

but under certain conditions ethers (see ETHER) are obtained.

The physical properties of the alcohols exhibit a gradation

with the increase of molecular weight. The lower members

are colourless mobile liquids, readily soluble in water and

exhibiting a characteristic odour and taste. The solubility

decreases as the carbon content rises. The normal alcohols

containing 1 to 16 carbon atoms are liquids at the ordinary

temperatures; the higher members are crystalline, odourless

and tasteless solids, closely resembling the fats in

appearance. The boiling points of the normal alcohols

increase regularly about 10 deg. for each CH2 increment;

this is characteristic of all homologous series of organic

compounds. Of the primary, secondary and tertiary alcohols

having the same empirical formula, the primary have the

highest, and the tertiary the lowest boiling point; this

is in accordance with the fairly general rule that a gain

in symmetry is attended by a fall in the boiling point.

The following monatomic alcohols receive special treatment

under their own headings:--ALCOHOL (ETHYL), ALLYL

ALCOHOL, AMYL, ALCOHOLS, BEN zsqrt. L ALCOHOL, BUTYL

ALcohols, METHY L ALcohol, and PROPYL ALCOHOLS.

ALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON (1799-1888), American educationalist

and writer, born on Spindle Hill, in the town of Wolcott,

New Haven county, Connecticut, on the 29th of November

1799. His father, Joseph Chatfield Alcox, was a farmer

and mechanic whose ancestors, then bearing the name of

Alcocke, had setlled in eastern Massachusetts in colonial

days. The son adopted the spelling ``Alcott'' in his early

youth. Self-educated and early thrown upon his own resources,

he began in 1814 to earn his living by working in a clock

factory in Plymouth, Conn., and for many years after 1815

he peddled books and merchardise, chiefly in the southern

states. He began teaching in Bristol, Conn., in 1823, and

subsequently conducted schools in Cheshire, Conn., in 1825-1827,

again in Bristol in 1827-1828, in Boston in 1828-1830, in

Germantown, now part of Philadelphia, in 1831-1833, and

in Philadelphia in 1833. In 1830 he had mariied Abby May,

the sister of Samuel J. May (1797-1871), the reformer and

abolitionist. In 1834 he opened in Boston a school which

became famous because of his original methods; his plan being

to develop self-instruction on the basis of self-analysis, with

an ever-present desire on his own part to stimulate the child's

personality. The feature of his school which attracted most

attention, perhaps, was his scheme for the teacher's receiving

punishment, in certain circumstances, at the hands of an offending

pupil, whereby the sense of shame might be quickened in the

mind of the errant child. The school was denounced in the

press, was not pecuniarily successful, and in 1839 was given

up, although Alcott had won the affection of his pupils, and

his educational experiments had challenged the attention of

students of pedagogy. The school is perhaps best described

in Miss E. P. Peabody's A Record of Mr Alcott's School

(1835). In 1840 Alcott removed to Concord, Massachusetts.

After a visit to England, in 1842, he started with two English

associates, Charles Lane and Henry C. Wright, at ``Fruitlands,''

in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts, a communistic experiment

at farm-living and nature-meditation as tending to develop the

best powers of body and soul. This speedily came to naught,

and Alcott returned (1844) to his home near that of Emerson in

Concord, removing to Boston four years later, and again living

in Concord after 1857. He spoke, as opportunity offered,

before the ``lyceums'' then common in various parts of the

United States, or addressed groups of hearers as they invited

him. These ``conversations,'' as he called them, were more

or less informal talks on a great range of topics, spiritual,

aesthetic and practical, in which he emphasized the ideas of

the school of American Transcendentalists led by Emerson, who

was always his supporter and discreet admirer. He dwelt upon

the illumination of the mind and soul by direct communion with

the Creative Spirit; upon the spiritual and poetic monitions

of external nature; and upon the benefit to man of a serene

mood and a simple way of life. As regards the trend and

results of Alcott's philosophic teaching, it must be said

that, like Emerson, he was sometimes inconsistent, hazy or

abrupt. But though he formulated no system of philosophy, and

seemed to show the influence now of Plato, now of Kant, or of

German thought as filtered through the brain of Coleridge, he

was, like his American master, associate and friend, steadily

optimistic, idealistic, individualistic. The teachings of

William Ellery Channing a little before, as to the sacred

inviolability of the human conscience--anticipating the later

conclusions of Martineau--really lay at the basis of the work

of most of the Concord transcendentalists and contributors

to The Dial, of whom Alcott was one. In his last years,

living in a serene and beautiful old age in his Concord

home, the Orchard House,where every comfort was provided by

his daughter Louisa (q.v.), Alcott was gratified at being

able to become the nominal, and at times the actual, head

of a Concord ``Summer School of Philosophy and Literature,''

which had its first session in 1879, and in which --in

a rudely fashioned building next his house--thoughtful

listeners were addressed during a part of several successive

summer seasons on many themes in philosophy, religion and

letters. Of Alcott's published works the most important is

Tablets (1868); next in order of merit is Concord Days

(1872). His Sonnets and Canzonets (1882) are chiefly

interesting as an old man's experiments in verse. He left

a large collection of personal jottings and memorabilia,

most of which remain unpublished. He died in Boston on the

4th of March 1888. Alcott was a Garrisonian abolitionist.

See A. Bronson Alcott, His Life and Philosophy (2 vols., Boston,

1893), by F. B. Sanborn and William T. Harris; New Connecticut:

an Autobiographical Poem (Boston, 1887), edited by F. B. Sanborn;

and Lowell's criticism in his Fable for Critics. (C. F. R.)

ALCOTT, LOUISA MAY (1832-1888), American author, was the

daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, and though of New England

parentage and residence, was born in Germantown, now part of

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 29th of November 1832.

She began work at an early age as an occasional teacher and

as a writer--her first book was Flower Fables (1854), tales

originally written for Ellen, daughter of R. W. Emerson. In

1860 she began writing for the Atlantic Monthly, and she was

nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in

1862-1863. Her home letters, revised and published in the

Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches (1863,

republished with additions in 1869), displayed some power of

observation and record; and Moods, a novel (1864), despite

its uncertainty of method and of touch, gave considerable

promise. She soon turned, however, to the rapid production

of stories for girls, and, with the exception of the cheery

tale entitled Work (1873), and the anonymous novelette

A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), which attracted little

notice, she did not return to the more ambitious fields of the

novelist. Her success dated from the appearance of the first

series of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868),

in which, with unfailing humour, freshness and lifelikeness,

she put into story form many of the sayings and doings of

herself and sisters. Little Men (1871) similarly treated

the character and ways of her nephews in the Orchard House in

Concord, Massachusetts, in which Miss Alcott's industry had

now established her parents and other members of the Alcott

family; but most of her later volumes, An Old-Fashioned

Girl (1870), Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag (6 vols., 1871-1879),

Rose in Bloom (1876), &c., followed in the line of Little

Women, of which the author's large and loyal public never

wearied. Her natural love of labour, her wide-reaching

generosity, her quick perception and her fondness for sharing

with her many readers that cheery humour which radiated from

her personality and her books, led her to produce stories of

a diminishing value, and at last she succumbed to overwork,

dying in Boston on the 6th of March 1888, two days after

the death of her father in the same city. Miss Alcott's

early education had partly been given by the naturalist

Thoreau, but had chiefly been in the hands of her father;

and in her girlhood and early womanhood she had fully shared

the trials and poverty incident to the life of a peripatetic

idealist. In a newspaper sketch entitled ``Transcendental

Wild Oats,'' afterwards reprinted in the volume Silver

Pitchers (1876), she narrated, with a delicate humour, which

showed what her literary powers might have been if freed from

drudgery, the experiences of her family during an experiment

towards communistic ``plain living and high thinking'' at

``Fruitlands,'' in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts, in 1843.

The story of her career has been fully and frankly

told in Mrs Ednah D. Cheney's Louisa May Alcott: Her

Life, Letters and Journals (Boston, 1889). (C. F. R.)

ALCOVE (through the Span. alcova, from the Arab. al-, the,

and quobbah, a vault), an architectural term for a recess in

a room usually screened off by pillars, balustrade or drapery.

ALCOY, a town of south-eastern Spain, in the province of

Alicante, on the small river Serpis, and at the terminus of a

branch railway connected with the Barcelona-Valencia-Alicante

line. Pop. (1900) 32,053. Alcoy is built on high ground

at the entrance to a gorge in the Moncabrer range (4547

ft.). It is a thriving industrial town, devoid of any great

antiquarian or architectural interest, though founded by the

Moors. It owes its prosperity to its manufacture of linen,

woolen goods and paper, especially cigarette paper. Many of

the factories derive their motive power from the falls of a

mountain torrent, known as the Salto de las Aguas. Labour

disturbances are frequent, for, like Barcelona, Alcoy has

become one of the centres of socialistic and revolutionary

agitation, while preserving many old-fashioned customs and

traditions, such as the curious festival held annually in

April in honour of St George, the patron saint of the town.

COCENTAINA (pop. 1900, 7093) is a picturesque and ancient

town, 4 m. N.E. by rail. It is surrounded by Roman walls,

which were partly rebuilt by the Moors, and it contains an

interesting fortified palace, owned by the dukes of Medinaceli.

For an account of the festival of St George of Alcoy,

see Apuntes historicos acerca de las fiestas que

celebra cada ano la ciudad de Alcoy a su patron San

Jorge, by J. A. Llobet y Vallosera (Alcoy, 1853).

ALCUIN (ALCHUINE), a celebrated ecclesiastic and man of

learning in the 8th century, who liked to be called by the

Latin name of ALBINUS, and at the Academy of the palace

took the surname of FLACCUS, was born at Eboracum (York)

in 735. He was related to Willibrord, the first bishop of

Utrecht, whose biography he afterwards wrote. He was

educated at the cathedral school of York, under the celebrated

master AElbert, with whom he also went to Rome in search of

manuscripts. When AElbert was appointed archbishop of York in

766, Alcuin succeeded him in the headship of the episcopal

school. He again went to Rome in 780, to fetch the pallium

for Archbishop Eanbald, and at Parma met Charlemagne, who

persuaded him to come to his court, and gave him the possession

of the great abbeys of Ferrieres and of Saint-Loup at

Troyes. The king counted on him to accomplish the great

work which was his dream, namely, to make the Franks familiar

with the rules of the Latin language, to create schools

and to revive learning. From 781 to 790 Alcuin was his

sovereign's principal helper in this enterprise. He had

as pupils the king of the Franks, the members of his family

and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel; he was

the life and soul of the Academy of the palace, and we have

still, in the Dialogue of Pepin (son of Charlemagne) and

Alcuin, a sample of the intellectual exercises in which they

indulged. It was under his inspiration that Charles wrote his

famous letter de litteris colendis (Boretius, Capitularia,

i. p. 78), and it was he who founded a fine library in the

palace. In 790 Alcuin returned to his own country, to which he

had always been greatly attached, and stayed there some time;

but Charlemagne needed him to combat the Adoptianist heresy,

which was at that time making great progress in the marches of

Spain. At the council of Frankfort in 794 Alcuin upheld the

orthodox doctrine, and obtained the condemnation of the heresiarch

Felix of Urgel. After this victory he again returned to his

own land, but on account of the disturbances which broke out

there, and which led to the death of King AEthelred (796),

he bade farewell to it for ever. Charlemagne had just given

him the great abbey of St Martin at Tours, and there, far

from the disturbed life of the court, he passed his last

years. He made the abbey school into a model of excellence,

and many students flocked to it; he had numerous manuscripts

copied, the calligraphy of which is of extraordinary beauty

(v. Leopold Delisle in the Memoires de l'Academie des

Inscriptions, vol. xxxii., 1st part, 1885) . He wrote

numerous letters to his friends in England, to Arno, bishop

of Salzburg, and above all to Charlemagne. These letters,

of which 311 are extant, are filled chiefly with pious

meditations, but they further form a mine of information as

to the literary and social conditions of the time, and are

the most reliable authority for the history of humanism in

the Carolingian age. He also trained the numerous monks of

the abbey in piety, and it was in the midst of these pursuits

that he was struck down by death on the 19th of May 804.

Alcuin is the most prominent figure of the Carolingian Renaissance,

in which have been distinguished three main periods: in the

first of these, up to the arrival of Alcuin at the court, the

Italians occupy the chief place; in the second, Alcuin and

the Anglo-Saxons are dominant; in the third, which begins in

804, the influence of the Goth Theodulf is preponderant.

Alcuin transmitted to the ignorant Franks the knowledge of

Latin culture which had existed in England since the time of

Bede. We still have a number of his works. His letters have

already been mentioned; his poetry is equally interesting.

Besides some graceful epistles in the style of Fortunatus, he

wrote some long poems, and notably a whole history in verse

of the church at York: Versus de patribus, regibus et sanctis

Eboracensis ecclesiae. We owe to him, too, some manuals used

in his educational work; a grammar and works on rhetoric and

dialectics. They are written in the form of dialogues,

and in the two last the interlocutors are King Charles and

Alcuin. He wrote, finally, several theological treatises:

a treatise de Fide Trinitatis, commentaries on the Bible,

&c. The complete works of Alcuin have been edited by Froben:

Alcuini opera, 1 vol. in 4 parts (Regensburg, 1777); this

edition is reproduced in Migne's Patrolog. lat. vols. c. and

ci. The letters have been published by Jaffe and Dummler in

Jaffe's Bibliotheca rerum germonicarum, vol. vi. pp. 132-897

(1873). E. Dummler has also published an authoritative

edition, Epistolae aevi Carolini, vol. ii. pp. 1-481, in the

Monumenta Germaniae, and has edited the poems in the same

collection: Poetae latini aevi Carolini, vol. i. pp. 169-341.

AUTHORITIES.--Monnier, Alcuin et Charlemagne (Paris,

1863); K. Werner, Alkuin und sein Jahrhundert (Paderborn,

1876); J. Bass Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great

and the Restoration of Education in the 9th Century

(London, 1877); Aug. Molinier, Les Sources de l'histoire de

France, vol. i. p. 191; G, Monod, Etudes critiques sur les

sources de l'histoire carolingienne, part i. (Paris, (1898);

C. J. B. Gaskoin, Alcuin: His Life and his Work (London,

1903). See further U. Chevalier, Repertoire des sources,

&c., biobibliographie, s.v. Alcuin; Wattenbach, Deutschlands

Geschichtsquellen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1904), i, p. 186. (C. PF.)

ALCYONE, or HALCYONE, in Greek mythology, daughter of

Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. For their presumption in calling

themselves Zeus and Hera they were changed into birds--Alcyone

into a diver, Ceyx into a kingfisher. According to another

story, Ceyx was drowned and his body cast on the shore.

His wife found the body, and the gods, out of compassion,

changed both her and her husband into kingfishers. By command

of Zeus (or Aeolus) the winds ceased to blow during their

brooding-time, for seven days before and after the shortest

day, that their eggs might not be carried away by the

sea. Hence the expression ``halcyon days,'' used in ancient

and modern times to denote a period of calm and tranquillity.

Apollonius Rhodius i. 1087; Ovid, Metam.

xi. 410 et seq.; Hyginus, Fabulae, 65.

ALDABRA, the collective name of a group of islands in

the Indian Ocean, forming part of the British colony of

Seychelles. They lie in 9 deg. 30' S., 46 deg. E., are 265 m.

N.W. of the northern point of Madagascar and 690 m. S.W. of

Mahe, the principal island of the Seychelles archipelago. The

Comoro Islands lie 220 m. S. by W. of Aldabra. The Aldabra

Islands constitute an atoll consisting of an oval ring of

land, some 40 m. in circumference and about 1 1/2 m. broad,

enclosing a shallow lagoon. Channels divide the ring into four

islands. Grande Terre or South Island forms three-fifths of the

circumference. The other islands are West Island or Ile

Picard, Polymnie and Middle Island. There are in addition

several islets in the lagoon, the most important being Ile

Michel. The total land area is estimated at about 60 sq. m., the

lagoon, 16 m. long and 4 m. wide, covering a somewhat larger

area. Pop. (1906) 127. The islands rise from 20 to 80 ft.

above the sea, and consist of rugged coral rock and limestone,

there being very little soil. The sea-face is generally

overhanging cliff, but in a few places are sandy beaches

and low sandhills. Dense scrub covers most of the land, but

the inner (lagoon) shore is everywhere bounded by mangrove

swamps. The flora and fauna of the islands present features

of unusual interest. They are chiefly noted as the habitat

of the gigantic land tortoise (Testudo elephantina), now

carefully preserved, and of several rare and peculiar birds,

including a rail (Dryolimnas aldabranus), an ibis (Ibis

abbottii) and a dove (Alectroenas sganzini.) Crustacea are

abundant. They include oysters, crabs of great size, and a

small mussel, found in enormous numbers. The flora includes

mangroves, Rubiaceae, Sapotaceae and other forms requiring

more than pure coralline material for their growth. Writing

of the fauna and flora generally, Mr R. Dupont, curator of the

Botanic station at Mahe, who visited Aldabra in 1906. says:

``The specimens represented, besides being partly peculiar,

mostly belong to the Mascarenes, Madagascar and Comoros

species. Many species are also common to East Africa and to

India. . . . The predominant species are Madagascar plants and

birds, which are carried by the currents and the winds. . . .

There are comparatively few (10) species of plants which are

endemic as far as the flora has been investigated, and it is

probable that most of them are also existing in the Comoros,

where the flora is not well known. . . . Endemic inferior

animals and mammals are practically non-existent, except two

bats and one scorpion, which are allied to Madagascar species

or introduced. The reptiles (tortoises) are also nearly

allied to the Mascarenes and Madagascar species which once

existed. With regard to birds and land shells the relation is

much closer to the Comoros species, and the latter, of which

I have collected seven species besides Rachis aldabrae, may

serve to point out more than the birds the land connexion of

Aldabra with the neighbouring countries.'' Aldabra, however,

although situated in that region of the Indian Ocean which

forms part of the site of the Indo-Madagascar continent

of the Secondary period, is not a peak of the submerged

land. It has been built up from the sunken remains of the

old continent by a deposit, in the opinion of Professor A.

Voeltzkow, of foraminiferal remains (mostly coccoliths and

rhabdoliths). In any case, however Aldabra was formed,

there can be no suggestion of its ever having been joined

to any other land (Stanley Gardiner). Dupont states that

at Aldabra the coral foundation is totally above water.

The coral limestone of the atoll has a peculiar vitrified

appearance and gives out a ringing sound when struck or

simply walked on. The coral is generally reddish, but

the colouring ranges from light yellow to chocolate-brown.

Aldabra was visited by Portuguese navigators in 1511. The

islands were already known to the Arabs, from whom they get

their name. They became in the middle of the 18th century

dependencies of the French establishments at Bourbon (Reunion),

whence expeditions were made for the capture of the giant

tortoises. In 1810 with Mauritius, Bourbon, the Seychelles

and other islands, Aldabra passed into the possession of

Great Britain. The inhabitants are emigrants from the

Seychelles. Goats are bred and coco-nuts cultivated,

but fishing is the chief industry. With other outlying

islands Aldabra is held under lease from the Seychelles

government, the lessees having exclusive trading privileges.

See R. Dupont, Report on a Visit of Investigation to . . .

the Aldabra Group of the Seychelles Islands (Seychelles,

1907); Dr Abbott in Proceedings, United States National Museum

(Washington, 1894); A. Voeltzkow in Abh. der Senckenbergischen

Naturferschenden Ges. vol. xxvi. part iv. (1901); J. S.

Gardiner, ``The Indian Ocean,'' Geo. Journ. Oct. 1906.

ALDBOROUGH, a village in the Ripon parliamentary division

of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 16 m. W.N.W. of

York, and 1 m. E. of the market town of Boroughbridge, which

has a station on a branch of the North-Eastern railway.

Aldborough formerly returned two members to parliament, but

was disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. The place is

remarkable from its numerous ancient remains. It was the

Isurium Brigantum of the Romans, originally perhaps a capital

of the Brigantes tribe, and afterwards a Romano-British town

of considerable size. Inscriptions, beautiful mosaics and

other traces of comfortable houses have been found, with

many potsherds, coins and bronze, iron and other objects;

and a large part of the town walls, several mosaics and

parts of buildings, can be seen. A fine collection is kept

in the Museum Isurianum in the grounds of the manor-house.

ALDEBURGH [ALDBOROUGH], a market town and municipal

borough in the Eye parliamentary division of Suffolk, England,

the terminus of a branch of the Great Eastern railway, 99 1/2

m. N.E. by E. from London. Area, 1629 acres. Pop. (1901)

2405. The surrounding district is open and somewhat bleak,

but a fine stretch of sand fringes the shallow inlet of

the North Sea known as Aldeburgh Bay. To the W. the river

Alde broadens as if into an estuary, but its outflow is

here prevented by the sand, and it runs south for nearly

10 m. parallel with the shore. The sandbanks have arrested

the encroachments of the sea, which submerged a former

site of Aldeburgh. The church of St Peter and St Paul is

Perpendicular, largely restored, and contains a monument to

the poet George Crabbe, born here on the 24th of December

1754. A small picturesque Moot Hall of the 16th century is

used for corporation meetings. Slaughden Quay on the Alde

admits small vessels, and fishing is carried on. Aldeburgh

is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors.

Aldeburgh (Aldburc) takes its name from the river Alde

on which it stands. It is not mentioned in pre-Conquest

records, but at the Domesday survey most of the land was held

by Robert Malet, a Norman. In 1155 the manor was granted

to the abbey of St John of Colchester, later to Cardinal

Wolsey, and on his disgrace, to Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk,

to whom Elizabeth in 1567 granted a market on Saturday.

In the 16th century Aldeburgh was a place of considerable

commercial importance, due, no doubt, to its position on the

sea-coast. Aldeburgh claims to be a borough by prescription:

the earliest charter is that granted by Henry VIII. in

1529. Edward VI. in 1548 raised it to the rank of a free

borough, granting a charter of incorporation and a market on

Wednesday. Later charters were granted by Philip and Mary in

1553, by Elizabeth in 1558 and 1567, by James I. (who granted

two annual fairs) in 1606, and by Charles I. in 1631 and

1637. The corporation included 2 bailiffs, 10 capital and

24 inferior burgesses, until the Municipal Corporations Act

1883. The fairs and markets became so unimportant that

they were discontinued about the middle of the 19th

century. The town returned two members to Elizabeth's

parliament of 1572, and continued to be so represented

till the Reform Bill of 1832 disfranchised it. Frequent

disastrous incursions of the sea in the 18th century reduced

Aldeburgh to a mere fishing village. In recent years it

has grown as a seaside resort, with excellent golf-links.

See John Kirby, The Suffolk Traveller (2nd ed., 1764); N. F. Hele,

Notes about Aldeburgh (1870); Victoria County History--Suffolk.

ALDEGREVER, or ALDEGRAF, HEINRICH (1502-1558), German

painter and engraver, was born at Paderborn, from which he

removed in early life to Soest, where he died. From the close

resemblance of his style to that of Albrecht Durer he has

sometimes been called the Albert of Westphalia. His numerous

engravings, chiefly from his own designs, are delicate and

minute, though somewhat hard in style, and entitle him to a

place in the front rank of the so-called ``Little Masters.''

There is a good collection in the British Museum. Specimens

of his painting are exceedingly rare. Five pictures are

in continental galleries, but the genuineness of the works

in the Vienna and Munich collections attributed to him is

at least doubtful, the only unchallenged example being a

portrait of Engelbert Therlaen (1551) in the Berlin Museum.

ALDEHYDES, a class of chemical compounds of the general

formula R.CHO (R = an alkyl or an aryl group). The name is

derived from alcohol dehydrogenatum in allusion to the fact

that they may be prepared by the oxidation of alcohols. The

lower members of the series are neutral liquids possessing

a characteristic smell; they are soluble in water and are

readily volatile (formaldehyde, however, is a gas at ordinary

temperatures). As the carbon content of the molecule

increases, they become less soluble in water, and their smell

becomes less marked with the increase in boiling point, the

highest members of the series being odourless solids, which

can only be distilled without decomposition in vacuo.

The aldehydes may be prepared by the careful oxidation of

primary alcohols with a mixture of potassium dichromate and

sulphuric acid,--3R.CH2OH + K2 Cr2O7 + 4H2SO4 = K2SO4

+ Cr2(SO4)3 + 7H2O + 3R.CHO; by distilling the calcium

salts of the fatty acids with calcium formate; and by hydrolysis

of the acetals. L. Bouveault (Bull. soc. chim., 1904 [3],

31, p. 1306) prepares aldehydes by the gradual addition of

disubstituted formamides (dissolved in anhydrous ether) to

magnesium alkyl haloids, the best yields being obtained by

the use of diethyl formamide. Secondary reactions take place

at the same time, yielding more particularly hydrocarbons

of the paraffin series. G. Darzens (Comptes Rendus, 1904,

139, p. 1214) prepares esters of disubstituted glycidic acids,

by condensing the corresponding ketone with monochloracetic

ester, in the presence of sodium ethylate. These esters on

hydrolysis yield the free acids, which readily decompose,

with loss of carbon dioxide and formation of an aldehyde,

/R /CRR1 /CRR1

OC< + Cl.CH2.COOC2H5 --> O< | --> O< |

\R1 \CH.COOC2H5 \CH.COOH

--> CO2 + CHRR1.CHO.

In the German Patent 157573 (1904) it is shown that by

the action of at least two molecular proportions of an alkyl

formate on two molecular proportions of a magnesium alkyl

or aryl haloid, a complex addition compound is formed, which

readily decomposes into a basic magnesium salt and an aldehyde,

C6H5MgBr + HCOOR --> RO.CH.C6H5.OMgBr --> MgBr.OR + C6H5CHO.

The aldehydes are characterized by their great chemical

reactivity. They act as reducing agents, silver nitrate

in the presence of ammonia being rapidly reduced to the

condition of metallic silver. They are easily oxidized to the

corresponding fatty acid, in many cases simply by exposure to

air. Nascent hydrogen reduces them to primary alcohols,

and phosphorus pentachloride replaces the carbonyl oxygen by

chlorine. They form many addition compounds, combining with

ammonia to form aldehyde ammonias of the type R.CH(OH).NH2.

These are colourless crystalline compounds, which are most readily

prepared by passing ammonia gas into an ethereal solution of the

aldehyde. With sodium bisulphite they form the so-called

bisulphite compounds R.CH(OH).SO3Na, which are readily resolved

into their components by distillation with dilute acids, and

are frequently used for the preparation of the pure aldehyde.

With hydrocyanic acid aldehydes form the cyanhydrins R.CH(OH).CN.

They react with hydroxylamine and phenylhydrazine, with the

formation of aldoximes and hydrazones. (For the isomerism of

the aldoximes see OXIMES.) The hydrazones are crystalline

substances which are of value in the characterization of the

aldehydes. Both oximes and hydrazones, on boiling with dilute

acid, regenerate the parent aldehyde. The hydrazones are

best prepared by mixing the aldehyde with phenylhydrazine

in dilute acetic acid solution, in the absence of any free

mineral acid. Semioxamazid, NH2.CO.CO.NH.NH2, has

also been employed for the identification of aldehydes

(W. Kerp and K. Unger, Berichte, 1897, 30. p. 585).

Aldehydes are converted into resins by the action of caustic

alkalies. On heating with alcohols to 100 deg. C. they form

acetals, and they also form condensation products with

para-amido-di-methyl-aniline (A. Calm, Berichte, 1884, 17, p.

2939). They react with the zinc alkyls to form addition products,

which are decomposed by water with formation of secondary

alcohols (K. Thurnlach, Annalen, 1882, 213, p. 369) thus:--

Zn(C2H5)2 H2O

/C2H5 /C2H5

CH3.CHO --> CH3.CH< --> CH3.CH< + ZnO + C2H6.

\OZnC2H5 \OH

The reaction is a general one for all aldehydes with zinc methyl

and zinc ethyl, but not with the higher zinc alkyls. V. Grignard

(Comptes Rendus, 1900 et seq.) showed that aldehydes combine

with magnesium alkyl iodides (in absolute ether solution) to

form addition products, which are decomposed by water with

the formation of secondary alcohols, thus from acetaldehyde

and magnesium methyl iodide, isopropyl alcohol is obtained.

H2O

/CH3

CH3.CHO + CH3MgI --> CH3.CH< --> (CH3)2CH.OH + MgI.OH.

\OMgI

The lower members of the aliphatic series are characterized

by their power of polymerization (see FORMALIN, and the

account of Acetaldehyde below), and also by the so-called

``aldol'' condensation, acetaldehyde in this way forming

aldol, CH3.CHOH.CH2.CHO. These aldols generally lose

the elements of water readily and pass into unsaturated

compounds; aldol itself on distillation at ordinary

atmospheric pressure gives crotonaldehyde, CH3.CH:CH.CHO.

Aldehydes are characterized by the reddish-violet colour which

they give with a solution of fuchsine that has been decolorized

by sulphurous acid (H. Schiff, Ann., 1866, 140, p. 131).

With diazobenzene sulphonic acid in the presence of alkali

and a trace of sodium amalgam, a reddish-violet coloration

is formed on standing (E. Fischer, Ber., 1883, 16, p.

657). A. Angeli (Gazz. chim. Ital., 1896, 22, ii. 17) has

shown that aldehydes in the presence of nitrohydroxylaminic

acid form hydroxamic acid. The aldehydes condense readily

with acetoacetic ester in the presence of ammonia, to pyridines

(see PYRIDINE), whilst O. Doebner and W. v. Miller (Ber.,

1892, 25, p. 2864; 1896, 29, p. 59) have shown that in the

presence of aniline and sulphuric acid they give substituted

quinolines. (See also C. Beyer, Ber., 1887, 20, p. 1908).

The chief aldehydes are shown in the following table:--

_____________________________________________________________________________

| Name. | Formula | Boiling | Melting|

| | | Point. | Point.|

|--------------------|-----------------------------------|---------|--------|

| Formaldehyde | H.CHO |-21 deg. | |

| Acetaldehyde | CH3.CHO | 20.8 deg. | |

| Propyl aldehyde | CH3.CH2.CHO | 49 deg. | |

| n-Butyl '' | CH3.(CH2)2.CHO | 75 deg. | |

| iso- '' '' | (CH3)2.CH.CHO | 61 deg. | |

| n-Valeryl '' | CH3.(CH2)3.CHO |103 deg. | |

| iso- '' '' | (C4H9.CHO | 92 deg. | |

| Oenanthyl '' | CH3.(CH2)5.CHO |155 deg. | |

| Capric '' | CH3.(CH2)8.CHO |121 deg. | |

| Lauric '' | CH3.(CH2)10.CHO | |44.5 deg. |

| Myristic '' | CH3.(CH2)12.CHO | |52.5 deg. |

| Palmitic '' | CH3.(CH2)14.CHO | |58.5 deg. |

| Stearic '' | CH3.(CH2)16.CHO | |63.5 deg. |

|--------------------|-----------------------------------|---------|--------|

| Acrolein | | | |

| ally aldehyde | CH2 : CH.CHO | 52 deg. | |

| Crotonic '' | CH3.CH : CH.CHO |104 deg. | |

| Tiglic '' | | | |

| (guaiacol) | CH3.CH : C.CH3.CHO |116 deg. | |

|--------------------|-----------------------------------|---------|--------|

| Proargylic A. | CH : C.CHO | 59 deg. | |

|--------------------|-----------------------------------|---------|--------|

| Benzaldehyde | C6H5.CHO |179 deg. | |

| {o | |200 deg. | |

| Toluicaldehyde{m | C6H4.CH3.CHO |199 deg. | |

| {p | |204 deg. | |

| Cumic '' | C6H4.C3H7.CHO |235 deg. | |

| Cinnamic '' | C6H5.CH : CH.CHO |247 deg. | |

|____________________|___________________________________|_________|________|

For formaldehyde see FORMALIN. Acetaldehyde, CH3.CHO,

was first noticed by C. Scheele in 1774 and isolated and

investigated by J. v. Liebig (Annalen, 1835, 14, p.

133). It is prepared by oxidizing ethyl alcohol with dilute

sulphuric acid and potassium bichromate, and is a colourless

liquid of boiling point 20.8 deg. C., possessing a peculiar

characteristic smell. Its specific gravity is 0.8009 (0 deg.

C.). It is miscible in all proportions with alcohol, ether and

water. It is readily polymerized, small quantities of

hydrochloric acid, zinc chloride, carbonyl chloride, &c.

converting it, at ordinary temperatures, into paraldehyde,

(C2H4O)3, a liquid boiling at 124 deg. C. and of specific

gravity 0.998 (15 deg. C.). Paraldehyde is moderately soluble in

water, and when distilled with sulphuric acid is reconverted

into the ordinary form. Metaldehyde, (C2H4O)3, is produced

in a similar way to paraldehyde, but at lower temperatures

(e.g. in presence of a freezing mixture). It is a crystalline

solid, which sublimes at 112 deg. -115 deg. C. It is insoluble

in water, and is only slightly soluble in alcohol and

ether. When heated in a sealed tube at 120 deg. C. it is

completely converted into the ordinary form. Paraldehyde

is oxidized by dilute nitric acid, with formation of much

glyoxal, (CHO)2. (For trichloracetaldehyde see CHLORAL.)

By the action of acetaldehyde on alcohol at 100 deg. C.,

acetal, CH3.CH(OC2H5)2, is produced. It may also be

prepared by oxidizing ethyl alcohol with manganese dioxide

and sulphuric acid (A. Wurtz). It is a colourless liquid

of specific gravity 0.8314 (20 deg. /4 deg. ) (J. W. Bruhl) and

boiling point 104 deg. C. Dilute acids readily transform it

into alcohol and aldehyde, and chromic acid oxidizes it to

acetic acid. Chlor- and brom-acetals have been described.

Thioaldehydes are also known, and are obtained by leading

sulphuretted hydrogen into an aqueous solution of acetaldehyde.

By this means a mixture is obtained which by distillation

or the action of hydrochloric acid yields trithioaldehyde,

(C2H4S)3. For the constitution of these substances

see E. Baumann and E. Fromm (Berichte, 1891, 24, p.

1426). Aldehyde ammonia, CH3.CH(OH).NH2, is formed

when dry ammonia gas is passed into an ethereal solution of

acetaldehyde. It crystallizes in glistening rhombohedra,

melting at 70 deg. -80 deg. C., and boiling at 100 deg. C. It is completely

resolved into its components when warmed with dilute acids.

The higher aldehydes of the series resemble acetaldehyde

in their general behaviour. Unsaturated aldehydes are also

known, corresponding to the olefine alcohols; they show the

characteristic properties of the saturated aldehydes and

can form additive compounds in virtue of their unsaturated

nature. The simplest member of the series is acrolein, C3H4O

or CH2 : CH.CHO, which can be prepared by the oxidation

of allyl alcohol, or by the abstraction of the elements of

water from glycerin by heating it with anhydrous potassium

bisulphate. It is also produced by the action of sodium on

a mixture of epichlorhydrin and methyl iodide, C3H5OCl +

CH3I + 2Na = C3H4O + NaI + NaCl + CH4. It is a colourless

liquid, with a very pungent smell, and attacks the mucous

membrane very rapidly. It boils at 52.4 deg. C. and is soluble in

water. It oxidizes readily: exposure to air giving acrylic

acid, nitric acid giving oxalic acid, bichromate of potash

and sulphuric acid giving carbon dioxide and formic acid.

It combines with bromine to form a dibromide, from which E.

Fischer, by the action of baryta water, obtained the synthetic

sugars a- and b-acrose (Berichte, 1889, 22, p. 360).

Metacrolein, (C3H4O)3, is a polymer of acrolein. By passing

acrolein vapour into ammonia, acrolein ammonia, C6H9NO, is

obtained. It is a reddish amorphous mass, insoluble in

alcohol, and when distilled yields picoline (methyl pyridine)

(A. Baeyer, Ann., 1870, 155, p. 283). Citronellal, rhodinal

and geranial are also unsaturated aldehydes (see TERPENES.)

The aromatic aldehydes resemble the aliphatic aldehydes in most

respects, but in certain reactions they exhibit an entirely

different behaviour. They do not polymerize, and in the

presence of caustic alkalies do not resinify, but oxidize

to alcohols and acids (see BENZALDEHYDE for Cannizzaro's

reaction). When heated with alcoholic potassium cyanide

they are converted into benzoins (q.v..) Vanillin does

not give the Cannizzaro reaction, but with alcoholic potash

forms vanillic acid, HOOC(1).C6H3.OCH3 (3).OH(4), and

vanilloin. With ammonia, benzaldehyde does not form an aldehyde

ammonia, but condenses to hydrobenzamide, ( C6H5CH)3N2,

with elimination of water. Cumic aldehyde (cuminol),

(CH3)2CH(1)C6H4.CHO(4), is found in Roman caraway oil and

in oil of the water hemlock. It is a liquid, boiling at 235 deg.

C., and has a specific gravity of 0.973. On distillation with

zinc dust it forms cymene (1.4 methyl isopropyl benzene).

Salicylic aldehyde (ortho-hydroxybenzaldehyde), HO(1).

C6H4.CHO(2), an aromatic oxyaldehyde, is a colourless liquid

of boiling point 196 deg. C. and specific gravity 1.172 (15 deg. ).

It is found in the volatile oils of Spiraea, and can be obtained

by the oxidation of the glucoside salicin, (C13H18O7),

which is found in willow bark. It is usually prepared by the

so-called ``Reimer'' reaction (Ber., 1876, 9, p. 1268), in which

chloroform acts on phenol in the presence of a caustic alkali,

C5H5OH + CHCl3 + 4KHO = 3KCl + 3H2O + KO.C6H4.CHO,

some para-oxybenaldehyde being formed at the same time. It

is volatile (para-oxybenzaldehyde is not) and gives a violet

coloration with ferric chloride. For dioxybenzaldehydes

and their derivatives see PIPERONAL and VANILLIN.

Cinnamic aldehyde (b-phenyl acrolein), C6H5.CH : CH.CHO,

an unsaturated aromatic aldehyde, is the chief constituent of

cinnamon oil. It is prepared by oxidizing cinnamyl alcohol, or

by the action of sodium ethylate on a mixture of benzaldehyde and

acetaldehyde. It is a colourless aromatic-smelling oily liquid,

which boils at 247 deg. C. and readily oxidizes on exposure.

By condensation of aldehydes with pyruvic acid and

naphthylamines, the a-alkyl-naphthoquinoline-g-carboxylic

acids are produced; the same reaction takes place with the

aromatic amines generally (O. Doebner, Ann. 1804, 281, p. 1),

COOH

|

/ \ COOH / \ / \

| | + | + R.CHO = | | | + 2H2O + 2H.

\ / \NH2 CO.CH3 \ / \N/ \R

ALDEN, JOHN (1599?-1687), one of the ``Pilgrims'' who in

1620 emigrated to America on the ``Mayflower'' and founded

the Plymouth Colony. According to William Bradford's

History of the Plimoth Plantation, he was hired as a

cooper at Southampton, ``where the ship victuled,'' just

before the voyage, ``and being a hopfull yong man, was much

desired.'' He was one of the first settlers of Duxbury,

Massachusetts, where he lived during the greater part of his

life, and from 1633 until 1675 he was an ``Assistant'' to

the governor of the colony, frequently serving as acting

governor. At the time of his death, at Duxbury, on the

12th of September 1687, he was the last male survivor of

the signers of the ``Mayflower Compact'' of 1620, and with

the exception of Mary Allerton was the last survivor of the

``Mayflower'' company. He is remembered chiefly because of

a popular legend, put into verse as The Courtship of Miles

Standish by Henry W. Longfellow, concerning his courtship

of Priscilla Mullins, whom he married in 1623, after having

wooed her first on behalf of his friend, Miles Standish.

ALDER, a genus of plants (Alnus) belonging to the order

Betulaceae, the best-known of which is the common alder (A.

glutinosa.) The genus comprises a few species of shrubs or

trees, seldom reaching a large size, distributed through

the North Temperate zone, and in the New World passing

along the Andes southwards to Chile. The British species

A. glutinosa is confined to the Old World. This tree

thrives best in moist soils, has a shrubby appearance, and

grows under favourable circumstances to a height of 40 or 50

ft. It is characterized by its short-stalked roundish leaves,

becoming wedge-shaped at the base and with a slightly toothed

margin. When young they are somewhat glutinous, whence the

specific name, becoming later a dark olive green. As with

other plants growing near water it keeps its leaves longer

than do trees in drier situations, and the glossy green foliage

lasting after other trees have put on the red or brown of

autumn renders it valuable for landscape effect. The stout

cylindrical male catkins are pendulous, reddish in colour

and 2 to 4 in. long; the female are smaller, less than an

inch in length and reddish-brown in colour, suggesting young

fir-cones. When the small winged fruits have been scattered the

ripe, woody, blackish cones remain, often lasting through the

winter. The alder is readily propagated by seeds, but throws

up root-suckers abundantly. It is important as coppice-wood

on marshy ground. The wood is soft, white when first cut and

turning to pale red; the knots are beautifully mottled. Under

water the wood is very durable, and it is therefore used for

piles. The supports of the Rialto at Venice, and many buildings

at Amsterdam, are of alder-wood. Furniture is sometimes made

from the wood, and it supplies excellent charcoal for gunpowder.

The bark is astringent; it is used for tanning and dyeing.

ALDER-FLY, the name given to neuropterous insects of the family

Sialidae, related to the ant-lions, with long filamentous

antennae and four large wings, of which the anterior pair is

rather longer than the posterior. The females lay a vast number

of eggs upon grass stems near water. The larvae are aquatic,

active, armed with strong sharp mandibles, and breathe by

means of seven pairs of abdominal branchial filaments. When

full sized they leave the water and spend a quiescent pupal

stage on the land before metamorphosis into the sexually mature

insect. Sialis lutaria is a well-known British example. In

America there are two genera, Corydalis and Chauliodes,

which are remarkable for their relatively gigantic size and

for the immense length and sabre-like shape of the mandibles.