AHMEDNAGAR, or AHMADNAGAR, a city and district of British India in the Central division of Bombay on the left bank of the river Sina. The town is of considerable antiquity, having been founded in 1494 by Ahmad Nizam Shah, on the site of a more ancient city, Bhingar. This Ahmad established a new monarchy, which lasted till its overthrow by Shah Jahan in 1636. In 1759 the Peshwa obtained possession of the place by bribing the Mahommedan commander, and in 1797 it was ceded by the Peshwa to the Mahratta chief Daulat Rao Sindhia. During the war with the Mahrattas in 1803 Ahmednagar was invested by a British force under General Wellesley and captured. It was afterwards restored to the Mahrattas, but again came into the possession of the British in 1817, according to the terms of the treaty of Poona. The town has rapidly advanced in prosperity under British rule. Several mosques and tombs have been converted to the use of British administration. The old industries of carpet-weaving and paper-making have died out; but there is a large trade in cotton and silk goods, and in copper and brass pots, and there are factories for ginning and pressing cotton. Ahmednagar is a station on the loop line of the Great Indian Peninsula railway, 218 m. from Bombay, and a military cantonment, being the headquarters of a brigade in the 6th division of the western army corps. The population in 1901 was 43,032.

The DISTRICT OF AHMEDNACAR is a comparatively barren tract with a small rainfall. The area is 6586 sq. m. The population in 1901 was 837,695, showing a decrease of 6% in the decade, due to the results of famine. The bulk of the population consists of Mahrattas and Kunbis, the latter being the agriculturists. On the north the district is watered by the Godavari and its tributaries the Prawara and the Mula; on the north-east by the Dor, another tributary of the Godavari; on the east by the Sephani, which flows through the valley below the Balaghat range; and in the extreme south by the Bhima and its tributary the Gor. The Sina river, another tributary of the Bhima, flows through the Nagar and Karjat talukas. The principal crops are millet, pulse, oil-seeds and wheat. The district suffered from drought in 1896-1897, and again in 1899-1900.

AHMED TEWFIK, PASHA (1845- ), Turkish diplomatist, was the son of Ismail Hakki Pasha. He was at first in the army, but left the service in 1862; four years later he entered the diplomatic service, being employed at various European capitals. He became minister at Athens in 1883 and ambassador in Berlin in 1884. He was appointed minister for foreign affairs (Kharijie Naziri) in 1896.

AHMED VEFIK, PASHA (1819-1891), Turkish statesman and man of letters, was born in Stambul in 1819. He was the son of Rouheddin Effendi, at one time charge d'affaires in Paris, an accomplished French scholar, who was, therefore, attached, in the capacity of secretary-interpreter, to Reshid Pasha's diplomatic mission to Paris in 1834. Reshid took Ahmed with him and placed him at school, where he remained about five years and completed his studies. He then returned to Constantinople, and was appointed to a post in the bureau de traduction of the ministry for foreign affairs. While thus employed he devoted his leisure to the translation of Moliere's plays into Turkish and to the compilation of educational books—dictionaries, historical and geographical manuals, &c.—for use in Turkish schools, with the object of promoting cultivation of the French language among the rising generation. In 1847 he brought out the first edition of the Salnameh, the official annual of the Ottoman empire. Two years later he was appointed imperial commissioner in the Danubian principalities, and held that office till early in 1851 when he was sent to Persia as ambassador—a post which suited his temperament, and in which he rendered good service to his goverment for more than four years. Recalled in 1855, he was sent on a mission to inspect the eastern frontiers, and on his return was appointed member of the Grand Council of Justice, and was entrusted with the revision of the penal code and the code of procedure. This work occupied him until the beginning of 1860, when he was sent as ambassador to Paris, for the special purpose of averting the much-dreaded intervention of France in the affairs of Syria. But Ahmed Vefik's abrupt frankness, irascibility and abhorrence of compromise unfitted him for European diplomacy. He offended the French government; his mission failed, and he was recalled in January, 1861. None the less his integrity of purpose was fully understood and appreciated in Paris. On his return he was appointed minister of the evkaj, but he only retained his seat in the cabinet for a few months. He was then for a brief period president of the Board of Audit, and subsequently inspector of the Anatolian provinces, where he was engaged for more than three years. His next appointment was that of director-general of customs, whence he was removed to the office of musteshar of the grand vizierate, and in the following year entered the cabinet of Midhat Pasha as minister of public instruction, but very soon retired to his seat in the Council of State and remained out of office until 1875, when he represented Turkey at the International Telegraphic Conference in St Petersburg. He was president of the short-lived Turkish parliament during its first session—March 19 to June 28, 1877—and at its close was appointed vali of Adrianople, where he rendered invaluable aid to the Red Cross Society. On his recall, at the beginning of 1878, he accepted the ministry of public instruction in the cabinet of Ahmed Hamdi Pasha, and on the abolition of the grand vizierate (February 5, 1878) he became prime minister and held office till about the middle of April, when he resigned. Early in the following year he was appointed vali of Brusa, where he remained nearly four years, and rendered admirable services to the province. The drainage of the pestilent marshes, the water-supply from the mountains, the numerous roads, the suppression of brigandage, the multiplication of schools, the vast development of the silk industry through the substitution of mulberry plantations for rice-fields, the opening out of the mineral springs of Chitli, the introduction of rose-trees and the production of attar of roses—all these were Ahmed Vefik's work; and he became so popular that when in 1882 he was recalled, it was thought advisable that he should be taken away secretly by night from the konak in Brusa and brought to his private residence on the Bosporus. A few days after his return he was again appointed prime minister (December 1, 1882), but Ahmed Vefik demanded, as the condition of his acceptance of office, that he should choose the other members of the cabinet, and that a number of persons in the sultan's entourage should be dismissed. Upon this, the sultan, on the 3rd of December, revoked the irade of the 1st of December, and appointed Said Pasha prime minister. For the rest of his life Ahmed Vefik, by the sultan's orders, was practically a prisoner in his own house; and eventually he died, on the 1st of April 1891, of a renal complaint from which he had long been a sufferer. Ahmed Vefik was a great linguist. He spoke and wrote French perfectly, and thoroughly understood English, German, Italian, Greek, Arabic and Persian. From all these languages he translated many books into Turkish, but wrote no original work. His splendid library of 15,000 volumes contained priceless manuscripts in many languages. In his lifetime he appreciably aided the progress of education; but, as he had no following, the effects of his labour and influence in a great measure faded away after his death. In all his social and family relations Ahmed Vefik was most exemplary. His charity knew no bounds. He was devoted to his aged mother and to his one wife and children. To his friends and acquaintances he was hospitable, courteous and obliging; his conversation was intellectual and refined, and in every act of his private life he manifested the spirit of a true gentleman. At home his habits, attire and mode of life were quite Turkish, but he was perfectly at his ease in European society; he had strong English proclivities, and numbered many English men and women amongst his intimate friends. In public life his gifts were almost sterilized by peculiarities of temperament and incompatibility with official surroundings; and his mission as ambassador to Persia and his administration of Brusa were his only thorough successes. But his intellectual powers, literary erudition and noble character made him for the last forty years of his life a conspicuous figure in eastern Europe. (E. W.*)

AHOM, or AHAM, a tribe of Shan descent inhabiting the Assam Valley, and, prior to the invasion of the Burmese at the commencement of the 19th century, the dominant race in that country. The Ahoms, together with the Shans of Burma and Eastern China and the Siamese, were members of the Tai race. The name is believed to be a corruption of the word "A-sam,'' the latter part of which is identical with "Shan'' (properly "Sham'') and with "Siam.'' Under their king Su-ka-pha they invaded Assam (q.v.) from the East in the year A.D. 1228, giving their name to the country. For a century and a half from 1228 the successors of Su-ka-pha appear to have ruled undisturbed over a small territory in Lakkimpur and Sibsagar districts. The extension of their power westward down the valley of the Brahmaputra was very gradual, and its success was by no means uniform. In the time of Aurangzeb the Ahom kings held sway over the entire Brahmaputra valley from Sadiya to near Goalpara, and from the skirts of the southern hills to the Bhutia frontier on the north. The dynasty attained the height of its power under Rudra Singh, who is said to have ascended the throne in 1695. In the following century the power of the Ahoms began to decay, alike from internal dissensions and the pressure of outside invaders. The Burmese were called in to the assistance of one of the contending factions in 1810. Having once obtained a foothold in the country, they established their power over the entire valley and ruled with merciless barbarity, until they were expelled by the British in 1824-1825. In the census of 1901 the total Ahom population in Assam was returned at 178,049.

The Ahoms retained the form of government in Assam peculiar to the Shan tribes, which may he briefly described as an organized system of personal service in lieu of taxation. Their religion was pagan, being quite distinct from Buddhism; but in Assam they gradually became Hinduized, and their kings finally adopted Hindu names and titles. They believed that there were in the beginning no heavenly bodies, air or earth, only water everywhere, over which at first hovered a formless Supreme Being called Pha. He took corporeal shape as a huge crab that lay floating, face upwards, upon the waters. In turn other animals took shape, the last being two golden spiders from whose excrement the earth gradually rose above the surrounding ocean. Pha then formed a female counterpart of himself, who laid four eggs, from which were hatched four sons. One of these was appointed to rule the earth, but died and became a spirit. His son also died and became the national household deity of the Ahoms. The origin of mankind is connected with a flood legend. The only survivors of the flood, and of the conflagration that followed it, were an old man and a pumpkin-seed. From the latter there grew a gigantic gourd. This was split open by a thunderbolt, the old man sacrificing himself to save the lives of those who were inside, and from it there issued the progenitors of the present races of men, beasts, birds, fishes and plants. The kings claimed independent divine origin.

The religion and language have both died out, being only preserved by a few priests of the old cult; but even among them the tradition of the pronunciation of the language has been lost. The Ahoms had a considerable literature, much of which is still in existence. Their historic sense was very fully developed, and many priests and nobles maintained bu-ran-jis (i.e. "stores of instruction for the ignorant''), or chronicles, which were carefully written up from time to time. A few of these have been translated, but as yet no European scholar possesses knowledge sufficient to enable him to study these valuable documents at first hand.

The Ahom language is the oldest member of the Tai branch of the Siamese-Chinese linguistic family of which we have any record. It bears much the same relationship to Siamese and Shan that Latin does to Italian. It is more nearly related to modern Siamese than to modern ahan, but possesses many groups of consonants which have become simplified in both. It is a language of the isolating class, in which every word is a monosyllable, and may be employed either as a noun or as a verb according to its context and its position in a sentence. In the order of words, the genitive follows the norm it governs, and, as usual in such cases, the relations of time and place are indicated by prefixes, not by suffixes. The meanings of the monosyllables were differentiated, as in the other Tai languages and in Chinese, by a system of tones, but these were rarely indicated in writing, and the tradition regarding them is lost. The language had an alphabet of its own, which was clearly related to that of Burmese.

See E. A. Gait, A History of Assam (Calcutta, 1906). For the language see The Linguistis Survey of India, vol. ii. (Calcutta, 1906) (contains grammar and vocabulary); G. A. Grierson, "Notes on Ahom,'' in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellshaft, vol. lvi., 1902, pp. 1 ff. (contains grammar and vocabulary, with specimens), and "An Ahom Cosmogony, with a translation and a vocabulary of the Ahom language,'' in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1904, pp. 181 ff. (G. A. GR.)

AHR, a river of Germany. It is a left-bank tributary of the Rhine, into which it falls at Sinzig, rising in the Eifel mountains, and having a total length of 55 m. It flows at first through rather monotonous country, but the latter portion of its course, from the village of Altenahr, over which tower rhe ruins of the castle of Ahr, or Are (10th century), is full of romantic beauty. It is well stocked with trout, and the steep declivities of the lower valley furnish red wines of excellent quality.

AHRENS, FRANZ HEINRICH LUDOLF (1809-1881), German philologist, was born at Helmstedt on the 6th of June 1809. After studying at Gottingen (1826-1829) under K. O. Muller and Ludolf Dissen, and holding several educational appointments, in 1849 he succeeded G. F. Grotefend as director of the Lyceum at Hanover, a post which he filled with great success for thirty years. He died on the 25th of September 1881. His most important work is De Graecae Linguae Dialectis (1839-1843, new ed. by Meister, 1882-1889), which, although unfortunately incomplete, dealing only with Aeolic and Doric, and in some respects superseded by modern research, will always remain a standard treatise on the subject. He also published Bucolicorum Graecorum Reliquiae (1855-1859); studies on the dialects of Homer and the Greek lyrists; on Aeschylus; and some excellent school-books. A volume of his minor works (ed. Haberlin) was published in 1891, which also contains a complete list of his writings.

AHRIMAN (Gr. 'Areimanios in Aristotle, or in Agathias; in the Avesta, Angro Mainyush—"the Destructive Spirit''), the name of the principle of evil in the dualistic doctrine of Zoroaster. The name does not occur in the Old Persian inscriptions. In the Avesta he is called the twin-brother of the Holy Spirits, and contrasted either with the Holy Spirit of Ormazd or with Ormazd himself. He is the all destroying Satan, the source of all evil in the world and, like Ormazd, exists since the beginning of the world. Eventually, in the great world catastrophe, he will be defeated by Ormazd and disappear. The later sect of the Zervanites held that both were visible manifestations of the primeval principle Zruvan akarana (Infinite Time). (See ZOROASTER.)

AHRWEILER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the river Ahr and the Remagen-Adenau line of railway. Pop. 5000. It is a town of medieval aspect and is surrounded by ancient walls, with battlements and four gates in good repair. There is a Gothic church (dating from 1245). A convent school of the Ursuline nuns is a prominent feature On a hill to the south. The trade is almost exclusively confined to the manufacture and export of the wines of the district.

AHT, a confederacy of twenty-two tribes of North American Indians of the Wakashan stock. They are settled on the west Coast of Vancouver, British Columbia. The chief tribes included are the Nitinaht, Tlaasaht or Makah, Tlaokiwaht or Clahoquaht, Ahansaht and Ehatishaht. The confederacy numbers some 3500.

AHTENA ("ice people''), the name of an Athapascan tribe of North American Indians, in the basin of Copper River, Alaska.

See Handbook of American Indians, ed. F. W. Hodge (Washington, 1907).

AHVAZ, a town of Persia, in the province of Arabistan, on the left bank of the river Karun, 48 m. S. of Shushter, in 31 deg. 18' N., 49 deg. E. It has been identified with the Aginis of Nearchus, 500 stadia from Susa, and occupies the site of what was once an extensive and important city. Of this ancient city vast remains are left, extending several miles along the bank of the river. Among the most remarkable are the ruins of a bridge and a citadel, or palace, besides vestiges of canals and watermills, which tell of former commercial activity. There are also the ruins of a band, or stone dam of great strength, which was thrown across the river for the purposes of irrigation. The band was 1150 yds. in length and had a diameter of 24 ft. at its base. Remains of massive structure are still visible, and many single blocks in it measure from 8 to 10 ft. in thickness. Ahvaz reached the height of its prosperity in the 12th and 13th centuries and is now a collection of wretched hovels, with a small rectangular fort in a state of ruin, and an Arab population of about 400. Since the opening of the Karun to foreign commerce in October 1888, another settlement called Benderi Nassiri, in compliment to the Shah Nassir ed din (d. 1896), has been established on a slight elevation overlooking the river at the point below the rapids where steamers come to anchor, about one mile below Ahvaz. It has post and telegraph offices; and agencies of some mercantile firms, a British vice-consul (since 1904) and a Russian consular agent (since 1902) are established there. The new caravan road to Isfahan, opened for traffic in 1900, promised, if successful, to give Ahvaz greater commercial importance.

AI [Sept. 'Aggai, 'Aggai Gai, Vulg. Hai], a small royal city of the Canaanites, E. of Bethel. The meaning of the name may be "the stone heap''; but it is not necessarily a Hebrew word. Abraham pitched his tent between Ai and Bethel (Gen. xii. 8, xiii. 3); but it is chiefly noted for its capture and destruction by Joshua (vii. 2-4. viii. 1-20). who made it "a heap for ever, even a desolation.'' It is mentioned by Isaiah (x. 28), and also after the captivity (Ezra ii. 28; Neh. vii. 32), but then probably was not more than a village. In the later Hebrew writings the name sometimes has a feminine form, Aiath (Is. x. 28), Aija (Neh. xi. 31). The definite article is usually prefixed to the name in Hebrew. The site was known, and some scanty ruins still existed, in the time of Eusebius and Jerome (Onomast., s.v. 'Aggai.) Dr E. Robinson was unable to discover any certain traces of either name or ruins. He remarks, however (Bib. Researches, ed. 1856, i. p. 443), that it must have been close to Bethel on account of Biblical narrative (Josh. viii. 17) . A little to the south of a village called Deir Diwan, and one hour's journey south-east from Bethel, is the site of an ancient place called Khirbet Haiyan indicated by reservoirs hewn in the rock, excavated tombs and foundations of hewn stone. This may possibly be the site of Ai; it agrees with all the intimations as to its position. It has also been identified with a mound now called Et-Tell ("the heap''), but though the name of a neighbouring village, Turmus Aya, is suggestive, it is in the wrong direction from Bethel. In this view recent authorities, such as G. A. Smith, generally coincide.

See Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1869, p. 123; 1874, p. 62; 1878, pp. 10, 132, 194, 1881, p. 254. (R. A. S. M.)

AIBONITO, an inland town of the electoral district of Guayama, Porto Rico, on the highway between San Juan and Ponce, 25 m. E.N.E. of the latter. It is the capital of a municipal district of the same name. Pop. (1899) of the town, 2085; of the district, 8596. The town is about 2200 ft. above sea level, and owing to its cool climate and freedom from malaria it has been chosen as an acclimatizing station and sanatorium for foreigners. It is surrounded by coffee plantations, and tobacco of excellent quality is raised in the vicinity. The town was considerably damaged by the great hurricane of the 8th of August 1899.

AICARD, JEAN FRANCOIS VICTOR (1848- ), French poet and dramatist, was born at Toulon on the 4th of February 1848. His father, Jean Aicard, was a journalist of some distinction, and the son early began his career in 1867 with Les Rebellions et les apaistments (1871); Poemes de Provence (1874), and La Chanson de l'Enfant (1876), both of which were crowned by the Academy; Miette et Nore (1880), a Provencal idyll; Le Livre d'heures de l'amour (1887); Jesus (1896), &c. Of his plays the most successful was Le Pere Lebonnard (1890), which was originally produced at the Theatre Libre. Among his other works are the novels, Le Roi de Camargue (1890), L'Ame d'un enfant (1898) and Talas (1901), Benjamine (1906) and La Venus de Milo (1874), an account of the discovery of the statue from unpublished documents.

AICHINGER, GREGOR (c. 1565-1628), one of the greatest German composers of the Golden Age. He was organist to the Fugger family of Augsburg in 1584. In 1599 he went for a two years' visit to Rome. This was for musical and not for ecclesiastical reasons, though he had taken orders before his appointment under Fugger. Proske, in the preface to vol. ii. of his Musica Divina, calls him a priest of Regensburg, and is inclined to give him the palm for the devout and ingenuous mastery of his style. Certainly this impression is fully borne out by the beautiful and somewhat quaint works included in that great anthology.

AICKIN, FRANCIS (d. 1805), Irish actor, first appeared in London in 1765 as Dick Amlet in Vanbrugh's The Confederacy at Drury Lane. He acted there, and at Covent Garden, until 1792. His repertory consisted of over eighty characters, and among his best parts were the Ghost in Hamlet and Jaques in As You Like It. His success in impassioned declamatory roles obtained for him the nickname of "Tyrant.''

His younger brother James AICHIN (d. 1803) was playing leading parts in both comedy and tragedy at the Edinburgh theatre, when he gave offence to his public by his protest against the discharge of a fellow-actor. He therefore went to London, and from 1767 to 1800 was a member of the Drury Lane Company and for some years a deputy manager. He quarrelled with John Philip Kemble, with whom, in 1792, he fought a bloodless duel.

AIDAN (d. 606), king of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, was the son of Gabran, king of Dalriada, and became king after the death of his kinsman King Conall, when he was crowned at Iona by St Columba. He refused to allow his kingdom to remain in dependence on the Irish Dairiada, but coming into collision with his southern neighbours he led a large force against AEthelfrith, king of the Northumbrians, and was defeated at a place called Daegsanstane, probablv in Liddesdale.

See Bede, Historiae Ecclesiasticae gentis Anglorum, edited by O'. Plummer (Oxford, 1896); Adamnan, Vita S. Columbae, edited by J. T. Fowler (Oxford, 1894).

AIDAN, or AEDAN, first bishop of Lindisfarne, a monk of Hii (Iona), was sent by the abbot Senegi to Northumbria, at the request of King Oswald, A.D. 634-635. He restored Christianity, and in accordance with the traditions of Irish episcopacy chose the island of Lindisfarne, close to the royal city of Bamborough, as his see. Although he retained the Irish Easter, his character and energy in missionary work won him the respect of Honorius and Felix. He survived Oswald, and died shortly after the murder of his friend Oswine of Deira, on the 31st of August 651, in the 17th year of his episcopate.

See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. Plummer), iii. 3, 5, 17, 25.

AIDE-DE-CAMP (Fr. for camp-assistant or, perhaps, field-assistant), an officer of the personal staff of a general, who acts as his confidential secretary in routine matters. In Great Britain the office of aide-de-camp to the king is given as a reward or an honorary distinction. In many foreign armies the word adjutant is used for an aide-de-camp, and adjutant general for a royal aide-de-camp. The common abbreviation for aide-de-camp in the British service is "A.D.C.,'' and in the United States "aid.'' Civil governors, such as the lord lieutenant of Ireland, have also, as a rule, officers on their staffs with the title and functions of aides-de-camp.

AIDIN. (1) A vilayet in the S.W. of Asia Minor including the ancient Lydia, Ionia, Carla and western Lycia. It derives its name from the Seljuk emir who took Tralles, and is the richest and most productive province of Asiatic Turkey. The seat of government is Smyrna. (2) The principal town of the valley of the Menderes or Maeander, about 70 m. E.S.E. of Smyrna. It is called also Guzel Hissar from the beauty of its situation on the lower slopes of Mons Messogis and along the course of the ancient Eudon. It is the capital of a sanjak. It was taken by the Seljuks, Aidin and Mentesh, late in the 13th century, and about 1390, when ruled by Isa Bey, a descendant of the first-named, acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty. In the Seljuk period it was a secondary city under the provincial capital, Tireh (q.v.) In the 17th century it came under the power of the Karasmans of Manisa and remained so till about 1820. Aidin is on the Smyrna-Dineir railway, has large tanneries and sweetmeat manufactories, and exports figs, cotton and raisins. It was greatly damaged by an earthquake in 1899. On a neighbouring height are to be seen the ruins of the ancient Tralles (q.v.), the site to which the name Guzel Hissar was particularly given by the Seljuks. Aidin is the seat of a British consular agent. As there are considerable numbers of Greeks, Armenians and Jews among the inhabitants, there are a Greek cathedral, several churches and synagogues in addition to the fine Turkish mosques. (D. G. H.)

AIDONE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Caltanisetta. From the town of Caltanisetta it is 22 m. E.S.E. direct (18 m. S.S.W. of the railway station of Raddusa, which is 41 m. W. of Catania). Pop. (1901) 8548. There are some interesting churches of the 14th century (see E. Mauceri in L'Arte, 1906, 17). On the Serra Orlando, a mountain not far off, are the extensive remains of an unknown city, the finest in eastern Sicily, but rapidly suffering destruction from the spread of cultivation and unauthorized excavations.

See P. Orsi in Atti del Congresso di Scienze Storiche, vol. v 178 Rome, 1904).

AIDS, a term of medieval finance, were part of the service due to a lord from his men, and appear to have been based upon the principle that they ought to assist him in special emergency or need. The occasions for demanding them and the amount to be demanded would thus be matters of dispute, while the loose use of the term to denote many different payments increases the difficulty of the subject.

Both in Normandy and in England, in the 12th century, the two recognized occasions on which, by custom, the lord could demand "aid,'' were (1) the knighting of his eldest son, (2) the marriage of his eldest daughter; but while in England the third occasion was, according to Glanvill, as in Normandy, his payment of "relief'' on his succession, it was, according to the Great Charter (1215), the lord's ransom from captivity. By its provisions, the king covenanted to exact an "aid'' from his barons on these three occasions alone—and then only a "reasonable'' one—except by "the common counsel'' of his realm. Enormous importance has been attached to this provision, as establishing the principle of taxation by consent, but its scope was limited to the barons (and the city of London), and the word "aids'' was omitted from subsequent issues of the charter. The barons, on their part, covenanted to claim from their feudal tenants only the above three customary aids. The last levy by the crown was that of James I. on the knighting of his eldest son (1609) and the marriage of his daughter (1613).

From at least the days of Henry I. the term "aid'' was also applied (1) to the special contributions of boroughs to the king's revenue, (2) to a payment in lieu of the military service due from the crown's knights. Both these occur on the pipe roll of 1130, the latter as auxilium militum (and possibly as auxilium comitatus.) The borough "aids'' were alternatively known as "gifts'' (dona), resembling in this the "benevolences'' of later days. When first met with, under Henry I., they are fixed round sums, but under Henry II. (as the Dialogue of the Exchequer explains) they were either assessed on a population basis by crown officers or were sums offered by the towns and accepted by them as sufficient. In the latter case the townsfolk were collectively responsible for the amount. The Great Charter, as stated above, extended specially to London the limitation on baronial "aids,'' but left untouched its liability to tallage, a lower and more arbitrary form of taxation, which the towns shared with the crown's demesne manors, and which London . resisted in vain. The two exactions, although distinct, have to be studied together, and when in 1296-1297 Edward I. was forced to his great surrender, he was formerly supposed by historians to have pledged himself, under De tallagio non concedendo, to levy no tallage or aid except by common consent of his people. It is now held, however, that he limited this concession to "aides, mises,'' and "prises,'' retaining the right to tallage. Eventually, by a statute of 1340, it was provided that the nation should not be called upon "to make any common aid or sustain charge'' except by consent of parliament. The aids spoken of at this period are of yet another character, namely, the grant of a certain proportion of all "movables'' (i.e. personal property), a form of taxation introduced about 1188 and now rapidly increasing in importance. These subsidies were conveniently classed under the vague term "aids,'' as were also the grants made by the clergy in convocation, the term covering both feudal and non-feudal levies from the higher clergy and proportions not only of "movables'' but of ecclesiastical revenues as well.

The "knight's aid'' of 1130 spoken of above is probably identical with auxilium exercitus spoken of in the oldest custumals of Normandy, where the phrase appears to represent what was known in England as "scutage.'' Even in England the phrase "quando Rex accipit auxilium de militibus'' occurs in 1166 and appears to be loosely used for scutage.

The same loose use enabled the early barons to demand "aid'' from their tenants on various grounds, such as their indebtedness to the Jews, as is well seen in the Norfolk fragments of returns to the Inquest of Sheriffs (1170).

Sheriff's aid was a local payment of a fixed nature paid in early days to the sheriff for his service. It was the subject of a hot dispute between Henry II. and Becket in 1163.

AUTHORITIES.—Stubbs' Constitutional History and Select Charters; M'Kechnie's Magna Carta; Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law; Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond; Dialogus de Scaccario (Oxford, 1892); Madox's History of the Exchequer; Round's Feudal England and The Commune of London; The Pipe Rolls (Record Commission and Pipe Roll Society). (J. H. R.)

AIGRETTE (from the Fr. for egret, or lesser white heron), the tufted crest, or head-plumes of the egret, used for adorning a woman's head-dress, the term being also given to any similar ornament, in gems, &c. An aigrette is also worn by certain ranks of officers in the French army. By analogy the word is used in various sciences for feathery excrescences of like appearance, as for the tufts on the heads of insects, the feathery down of the dandelion, the luminous rays at the end of electrified bodies, or the luminous rays seen in solar eclipses, diverging from the moon's edge.

AIGUES-MORTES, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Gard 25 m. S.S.W. of Nimes, on a branch line of the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee railway. Pop. (1906) 3577. Aigues-Mortes occupies an isolated position in the marshy plain at the western extremity of the Rhone delta, 2 1/2 m. from the Golfe du Lion. It owes its celebrity to the medieval fortifications of remarkable completeness with which it is surrounded. They form a parallelogram 596 yds. long by 149 yds. broad, and consist of crenellated walls from 25 to 36 ft. in height, dominated at intervals by towers. Of these, the Tour de Constance, built by Louis IX., is the most interesting; it commands the northwestern angle of the ramparts, and contains two circular, Vaulted chambers, used as prisons for Protestants after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The remainder of the fortifications were built in the reign of Philip III. Aigues-Mortes is the meeting-place of several canals connecting it with Beaucaire, with Cette, with the Lesser Rhone and with the Mediterranean, on which it has a small port. Fishing and the manufacture of soda are the chief industries with which the town is connected. It has trade in coal, oranges and other fruits, and in wine. In the surrounding country there are important vineyards, which are preserved from disease by periodical submersion. There is a statue in the town in memory of Louis IX. who embarked from Aigues-Mortes in 1248 and 1270 for the seventh and eighth crusades. To further the prosperity of the town a most liberal charter was granted to it, and in addition the trade of the port was artificially fostered by a decree requiring that every vessel navigating within sight of its lights should put in there. This ordinance remained in force till the reign of Louis XIV.

AIGUILLE (Fr. for needle), the sharp jagged points above the snow-line, standing upon the massif of a mountain split by frost action along joints or planes of cleavage with sides too steep for snow to rest upon them. Aiguilles are thus the forms remaining from the splitting up of the high ridges with houseroof structure into detached pinnacles.

AIGUILLETTE (Fr. diminutive of AIGUILLE, a needle; the obsolete English form is "aglet''), originally a tag of metal, often made of precious metals and richly chased, attached to the end of a lace or ribbon, and pointed, so as to pass more easily through eyelet holes. The term was, in time, applied to any bright ornament or pendant for the dress made of metal, and is now specially used of ornamental cords and tags of gold and silver lace, worn on naval and military uniforms. The aiguillette is fastened to the shoulder, the various cords hanging down therefrom being fastened at their other end on the front of the coat.

AIGUILLON, EMMANUEL ARMAND DE WIGNEROD DU PLESSIS DE RICHELIEU, DUC D' (1720-1782), French statesman, nephew of the marechal de Richelieu, was born on the 31st of July 1720. He entered the army at the age of seventeen, and at the age of nineteen was made colonel of the regiment of Brie. He served in the campaigns in Italy during the War of the Austrian Succession, was seriously wounded at the siege of Chateau-Dauphin (1744), was taken prisoner (1746) and was made marechal de camp in 1748. His marriage in 1740 with Louise Felicite de Brehan, daughter of the comte de Plelo, coupled with his connexion with the Richelieu family, gave, him an important place at court. He was a member of the so-called parti devot, the faction opposed to Madame de Pompadour, to the Jansenists and to the parlement, and his hostility to the new ideas drew upon him the anger of the pamphleteers. In 1753 he was appointed commandant (governor) of Brittany and soon became unpopular in that province, which had retained a large number of privileges called "liberties.'' He first came into collision with the provincial estates on the question of the royal imposts (1758), but was then blamed for his inertia in the preparation of a squadron against England (1759), and finally alienated the parlement of Brittany by violating the privileges of the province (1762). In June 1764 the king, at the instance of d'Aiguillon, quashed a decree of the parlement forbidding the levying of new imposts without the consent of the estates, and refused to receive the remonstrances of the parlement against the duke. On the 11th of November 1765 La Chalotais, the procureur of the parlement, was arrested, but whether at the instigation of d'Aiguillon is not certain. The conflict between d'Aiguillon and the Bretons lasted two years. In the place of the parlement, which had resigned, d'Aiguillon organized a tribunal of more or less competent judges, who were ridiculed by the pamphleteers and ironically termed the bailliage d'Aiguillon. In 1768 the duke was forced to suppress this tribunal, and returned to court, where he resumed his intrigue with the parti devot and finally obtained the dismissal of the minister Choiseul (December 24, 1770). When Louis XV., acting on the advice of Madame Dubarry, reorganized the government with a view to suppressing the resistance of the parlements, d'Aiguillon was made minister of foreign affairs, Maupeou and the Abbe Terray (1715-1778) also obtaining places in the ministry. The new ministry, albeit one of reform, was very unpopular, and was styled the "triumvirate.'' All the failures of the government were attributed to the mistakes of the ministers. Thus d'Aiguillon was blamed for having provoked the coup d'etat of Gustavus III., king of Sweden, in 1772, although the instructions of the comte de Vergennes, the French ambassador in Sweden, had been written by the minister, the duc de la Vrilliere. D'Aiguillon, however, could do nothing to rehabilitate French diplomacy; he acquiesced in the first division of Poland, renewed the Family Compact, and, although a supporter of the Jesuits, sanctioned the suppression of the society. After the death of Louis XV. he quarrelled with Maupeou and with the young queen, Marie Antoinette, who demanded his dismissal from the ministry (1774). He died, forgotten, in 1782. In no circumstances had he shown any special ability. He was more fitted for intrigue than for government, and his attempts to restore the status of French diplomacy met with scant success.

See Memoires du ministere du duc d'Aiguillon (3rd ed., Paris and Lyons, 1792), probably written by J. L. Soulavie. On d'Aiguillon's governorship of Brittany see Carre, La Chalotais et le duc d'Aiguillon (Paris, 1893); Marion, La Bretagne et le duc d'Aiguillon (Paris, 1898); and Barthelemy Pocquet, Le Duc d'Aiguillon et La Chalotais (Paris, 1901—1902). The three last have full biblioaraphies. See also Flammermont, Le Chancelier Maupeou et les parlements (Paris, 1883); Frederic Masson, Le Cardinal de Bernis (Paris, 1884).

AIGUILLON, MARIE MADELEINE DE WIGNEROD DU PONT DE COURLAY, DUCHESSE D' (1604-1675), daughter of Cardinal Richelieu's sister. In 1620 she married a nephew of the constable de Luynes, Antoine de Beauvoir du Roure, sieur de Combalet, who died in 1622. In 1625, through her influence, she was made a lady-in-waiting (dame d'atour) to Ihe queen-mother, and in 1638 was created duchess of Aiguihon. She did not marry a second time, although Richelieu wished to marry her to a prince—either to the comte de Soissons or to the king's brother. After the death of the cardinal (1642) she retained her honours and titles, but withdrew from the court, and devoted herself entirely to works of charity. She entered into relations with Saint Vincent de Paul and helped him to establish the hospital for foundlings. She also took part in organizing the General Hospital and several others in the provinces. She died on the 17th of April 1675. She was the patroness of Corneille, who in 1636 dedicated to her his tragedy of The Cid.

See E. Flechier, Oraison funebre de Mme. Marie de Wignerod, duchesse d'Aiguillon; Bonneau-Avenant, La duchesse d'Aiguillon (1879); M.emoires de Saint-Simon, ed. by A. de Boislisle (1879 et seq..)

AIGUN, or AIHUN (also Sakhalyan-ula-khoto), a town of China, province Hei-lung-kiang, in northern Manchuria, situated on the right bank of the Amur, in a fertile and populous region, 20 m. below Blagovyeshchensk, where it occupies nearly 2 m. on the bank of the river. There is a palisaded fort in the middle of the town, inside of which is the house of the fu-tu (governor). Its merchants carry on an active local trade in grain, mustard, oil and tobacco, and some of its firms supply the Russian administration with grain and flour. During the "Boxer'' rising of 1900 it was, for a few weeks, the centre of military action directed against the Russians. The population, of some 20,000, includes a few hundred Mussulmans. The town was founded first on the left bank of the Amur, below the mouth of the Zeya, but was abandoned, and the present town was founded in 1684. It was here that Count Muraviev concluded, in May 1857, the Aihun treaty, according to which the left bank of the Amur was conceded to Russia.

AIKEN, a city and the county-seat of Aiken county, South Carolina, U.S.A., 17 m. E.N.E. of Augusta, Georgia. Pop. (1890) 2362; (1900) 3414 (2131 of negro descent); (1910) 3911. It is served by the Southern railway, and by an electric line connecting with Augusta. Aiken is a fashionable winter resort, chiefly frequented by Northerners, and is pleasantly situated about 500 ft. above sea level in the heart of the famous sand-hill and pine-forest region of the state. The dry and unusually equable temperature (mean for winter 50 deg. F., for spring 57 deg. F., and for autumn 64 deg. F.) and the balmy air laden with the fragrance of the pine forests have combined to make Aiken a health and pleasure resort; its climate is said to be especially beneficial for those afflicted with pulmonary diseases. There are fine hotels, club houses and cottages, and the Palmetto Golf Links near the city are probably the finest in the southern states; fox-hunting, polo, tennis and shooting are among the popular sports. There are some excellent drives in the vicinity. The city is the seat of the Aiken Institute (for whites) and the Schofield Normal and Industrial School (for negroes). There are lumber mills, cotton mills and cotton-gins; and cotton, farm products and artificial stone are exported. Considerable quantities of aluminium are obtained from the kaolin deposits in the vicinity. The city's water supply is obtained from artesian wells. Aiken was settled in the early part of the 19th century, but was not incorporated until 1835, when it was named in honour of William Aiken (1806-1887), governor of the state in 1844—1847, and a representative in Congress in 1851-1857.

AIKIN, ARTHUR (1773-1854), English chemist and mineralogist, was born on the 19th of May 1773, at Warrington in Lancashire. He studied chemistry under Priestley and gave attention to the practical applications of the science. To mineralogy he was likewise attracted, and he was one of the founders of the Geological Society of London, 1807, and honorary secretary, 1812-1817. To the transactions of that society he contributed papers on the Wrekin and the Shropshire coalfield, &c. Later he became secretary of the Society of Arts, and in 1841 treasurer of the Chemical Society. In early life he had been for a short time a Unitarian minister. He was highly esteemed as a man of sound judgment and wide knowledge. He died in London on the 15th of April 1854.

PUBLICATIONS.—Journal of a Tour through North Wales and part of Shropshire with observations in Mineralogy and other branches of Natural History (London, 1797); A Manual of Mineralogy (1814; ed. 2, 1815); A Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy (with his brother C. R. Aikin), 2 vols. (London, 1807, 1814).

AIKIN, JOHN (1747-1822), English doctor and writer, was born at Kibworth-Harcourt, and received his elementary education at the Noncomformist academy at Warrington, where his father was tutor. He studied medicine in the university of Edinburgh, and in London under Dr Wilham Hunter. He practised as a surgeon at Chester and Warrington. Finally, he went to Leyden, took the degree of M.D. (1780), and in 1784 established himself as a doctor in Yarmouth. In 1792 he removed to London, where he practised as a consulting physician. But he concerned himself more with the advocacy of liberty of conscience than with his professional duties, and he began at an early period to devote himself to literary pursuits. In conjunction with his sister, Mrs Barbauld (q.v.), he published a popular series of volumes entitled Evenings at Home (6 vols., 1792-1795), excellently adapted for elementary family reading, which were translated into almost every European language. In 1798 Dr Aikin retired from professional life and devoted himself with great industry to various literary undertakings, among which his General Biography (10 vols., 1799-1815) holds a conspicuous place. Besides these, he published Biog. Memoirs of Medicine (1780); Lives of John Selden and Archbishop Usher (1812) and other works. He edited the Monthly Magazine from 1796 to 1807, and conducted a paper called the Athenaeum from 1807 to 1809, when it was discontinued. Aikin died in 1822.

His daughter, LUCY AIKIN (1781-1864), born at Warrington on the 6th of November 1781, had some repute as a historical writer. After producing various books for the young, and a novel, Lorimer (1814), she published in 1818 her Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, which passed through several editions. This was followed by Memoirs of the Court of James I. (1822), Memoirs of the Court of Charles I. (1833) and a Life of Addison (1843). Miss Aikin died at Hampstead, where she had lived for forty years, on the 29th of January 1864.

See a Memoir of John Aikin, with selections of his miscellaneous pieces (1823), by his daughter; and the Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters of William Ellery Channing, edited by P. H. Le Breton.

AIKMAN, WILLIAM (1682-1731), British portrait-painter, was born at Cairney, Forfarshire. He was intended by his father for the bar, but followed his natural bent by becoming a pupil under Sir John Medina, the leading painter of the day in Scotland. In 1707 he went to Italy, resided in Rome for three years, afterwards travelled to Constantinople and Smyrna, and in 1712 returned home. In Edinburgh, where he practised as a portrait-painter for some years, he enjoyed the patronage of the duke of Argyll; and on his removal to London in 1723 he soon obtained many important commissions. Perhaps his most successful work was the portrait of the poet Gay. He also painted portraits of himself, Fletcher of Saltoun, William Carstares and Thomson the poet. The likenesses were generally truthful and the style was modelled very closely upon that of Sir Godfrey Kneller. Aikman held a good position in literary society and counted among his personal friends Swift, Pope, Thomson, Allan Ramsay, Somervile and Mallet.

AILANTHUS (more correctly ailantus, from ailanto, an Amboyna word probably meaning "Tree of the Gods,'' or "Tree of Heaven''), a genus of trees belonging to the natural order Simarubaceae. The best known species, A. glandulosa, Chinese sumach or tree of heaven, is a handsome, quick-growing tree with spreading branches and large compound leaves, resembling those of the ash, and bearing numerous pairs of long pointed leaflets. The small greenish flowers are borne on branched panicles; and the male ones are characterized by having a disgusting odour. The fruits are free in clusters, and each is drawn out into a long wing with the seed in the middle. The wood is fine grained and satiny. The tree, which is a native of China and Japan, was introduced into England in 1751 and is a favourite in parks and gardens. A silk spinning moth, the ailanthus moth (Bombyx or Philosamia cynthia), lives on its leaves, and yields a silk more durable and cheaper than mulberry silk, but inferior to it in fineness and gloss. This moth is common near many towns in the eastern United States; it is about 5 in. across, with angulated wings, and in colour olive brown, with white markings. Other species of ailanthus are: A. imberbifiora and A. punctata, important Australian timber-trees; and A. excelsa, common in India.

AILLY, PIERRE D, (1350-1420), French theologian, was born at Compiegne in 1350 of a bourgeois family, and studied in Paris at the celebrated college of Navarre. He became a licentiate of arts in 1367, procurator of the French "nation'' in 1372, bachelor of theology in 1372, and licentiate and doctor in that faculty in 1381.

Since 1378 Western Christendom, in consequence of the election of the two popes Urban VI. and Clement VII., had been divided into two obediences. In the spring of 1379 Pierre d'Ailly, in anticipation even of the decision of the university of Paris, had carried to the pope of Avignon the "role'' of the French nation, but notwithstanding this prompt adhesion he was firm in his desire to put an end to the schism, and when, on the 20th of May 1381, the university decreed that the best means to this end was to try to gather together a general council, Pierre d'Ailly supported this motion before the king's council in the presence of the duke of Anjou. The dissatisfaction displayed shortly after by the government obliged the university to give up this scheme, and was probably the cause of Pierre d'Ailly's temporary retirement to Noyon, where he held a canonry. There he continued the struggle for his side in a humorous work, in which the partisans of the council are amusingly taken to task by the demon Leviathan.

After his return to Paris, where from 1384 onwards he filled the position of master of the college of Navarre, and took part in a violent campaign against the chancellor of Notre-Dame, he was twice entrusted with a mission to Clement VII. in 1388 to defend the doctrines of the university, and especially those concerning the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, against the preaching friar Jean de Montson, and in 1389 to petition in the name of the king for the canonization of the young cardinal Peter of Luxemburg. The success which attended his efforts on these two occasions, and the eloquence which he displayed, perhaps contributed to his choice as the king,s almoner and confessor. At the same time, by means of an exchange, he obtained to the highest dignity in the university, becoming chancellor of Notre-Dame de Paris.

When in 1394 Benedict XIII. succeeded Clement VII. at Avignon, Pierre d'Ailly was entrusted by the king with a mission of congratulation to the new pontiff. His obsequious language on this occasion, and the favours with which it was rewarded, formed a too violent contrast to the determined attitude of the university of Paris, which, tired of the schism, was even then demanding the resignation of the two pontiffs. Pierre d'Ailly himself had not long before taken part in the drawing up of a letter to the king in which the advantages of this double abdication were set forth, but since then his zeal had seemed to cool a little. None the less, on his return from Avignon, he again in the presence of the king enlarged upon the advantages offered by the way which the university commended. But the suspicions aroused by his conduct found further confirmation when he caused himself—or allowed himself—to be nominated bishop of Le Puy by Benedict XIII. (April 2, 1395 ). The great number of benefices which he held left room for some doubt as to his disinterestedness. Henceforward he was under suspicion at the university, and was excluded from the assemblies where the union was discussed.

Some time afterwards Pierre d'Ailly became bishop of Cambrai (March 19, 1397) by the favour of the pope, who had yielded no whit, and, by virtue of this position, became also a prince of the empire. In order to take possession of his new see, he had to brave the wrath of the duke of Burgundy, override the resistance of the clergy and bourgeoisie, and even withstand an armed attack on the part of several lords; but his protector, the duke of Orleans, had his investiture performed by Wenceslaus, king of the Romans. The latter, though a partisan of the pope of Rome, took the opportunity of enjoining on Pierre d'Ailly to go in his name and argue with the pope of Avignon, a move which had as its object to persuade Benedict XIII. to an abdication, the necessity of which was becoming more and more evident. However, the language of the bishop of Cambrai seems on this occasion to have been lacking in decision; however that may be, it led to no felicitous result.

France next tried to bring violent pressure to bear to conquer the obstinacy of Benedict XIII. by threatening a formal withdrawal from his obedience. Pierre d'Ailly, who, in spite of his attachment to the pope, had been carried away by the example of the kingdom, was among the first who, in 1403, after experience of what had happened, counselled and celebrated the restoration of obedience. He was sent by Charles VI. on an embassy to Benedict XIII. and seized this opportunity of lavishing on the pontiff friendly congratulations mingled with useful advice. Two years later, before the same pontiff, he preached in the city of Genoa a sermon which led to the general institution, in the countries of the obedience of Avignon, of the festival of the Holy Trinity.

At the ecclesiastical council which took place at Paris in 1406 Pierre d'Ailly made every effort to avert a new withdrawal from the obedience and, by order of the king, took the part of defender of Benedict XIII., a course which yet again exposed him to attacks from the university party. The following year he and his disciple Gerson formed part of the great embassy sent by the princes to the two pontiffs, and while in Italy he was occupied in praiseworthy but vain efforts to induce the pope of Rome to remove himself to a town on the Italian coast, in the neighbourhood of his rival, where it was hoped that the double abdication would take place. Discouraged by his failure to effect this, he returned to his diocese of Cambrai at the beginning of 1408. At this time he was still faithful to Benedict XIII., and the disinclination he felt to joining the members of the French clergy who were on the point of ratifying the royal declaration of neutrality excited the anger of Charles VI.'s government, and a mandate, which was however not executed, ordered the arrest of the bishop of Cambrai.

It was not till after the cardinals of the two colleges had led to the convocation of the general council of Uisa that Tierre d'Aiily renounced the support of Benedict XIII., and, for want of a better policy, again allied himself with the cause which he had championed in his youth. In the council lay now, to judge from his words, the only chance of salvation; and, in view of the requirements of the case, he began to argue that, in case of schism, a council could be convoked by any one of the faithful, and would have the right to judge and even to depose the rival pontiffs. This was, in fact, the procedure of the council of Pisa, in which Pierre d'Ailly took part. After the declaration of the deposition of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. it went on to the election of Alexander V. (June 26th, 1409), This pope reigned only ten months; his successor, John XXIII., raised Pierre d'Ailly to the rank of cardinal (June 6, 1411), and furtuer, to indemnify him for the loss of the bishopric of Cambrai, conferred upon him the administration of that of Limoges (November 3, 1412), which was shortly after exchanged for the bishopric of Orange. He also nominated Pierre d'Ailly as his legate in Germany (March 18, 1413).

Forgetting these benefits, the cardinal of Cambrai was one of the most formidable adversaries of John XXIII. at the council of Constance. Convinced as he was of the necessity for union and reform, he contributed more than any one to the adoption of the principle that, since the schism had survived the council of Pisa, it was necessary again to take up the work for a fundamental union, without considering the rights of John XXIII. any more than they had those of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. From this point of view Pierre d'Ailly, together with his compatriot Cardinal Fillastre, took the preponderating part during the first few months. Afterwards, seeing the trend of events, he showed some uneasiness and hesitation. He refused, however, to undertake the defence of John XXIII., and only appeared in the trial of this pope to make depositions against him, which were sometimes of an overwhelming character.

Among the important matters which claimed his attention at Constance may be mentioned also the condemnation of the errors of Wycliffe and the trial of John Huss. The reading in public of his two treatises De Potestate ecclesiastica and De Reformalione Ecclesiae revealed, besides ideas very peculiar to himself on the reform and constitution of the church, his design of reducing the power of the English in the council by denying them the right of forming a separate nation (October 1-November 1, 1416). By this campaign, which exposed him to the worst retaliation of the English, he inaugurated his role of "procurator and defender of the king of France.''

When at last the question arose of giving the Christian world a new pope, this time sole and uncontested, Pierre d'Ailly defended the right of the cardinals, if not to keep the election entirely in their own hands, at any rate to share in the election, and he brought forward an ingenious system for reconciling the pretensions of the council with the rights of the Sacred College. In this way was elected Pope Martin V. (November 11, 1417), and the task of Pierre d'Ailly was at last finished.

The predominance of the Anglo-Burgundians in France having made it impossible for him to stay there, he went to Avignon to end his days in melancholy calculations arising from the calamities of which he had been the witness, and the astrological reckonings, in which he found pleasure, of the chances for and against the world coming to an end in the near future. He died on the 9th of August 1420.

Pierre d'Ailly's written works are numerous. A great part of them was published with the works of Gerson (by Elhes du Pin, Antwerp, 1706); another part appeared in the 15th century, probably at Brussels, and there are many treatises and sermons still unpublished. In philosophy he was a nominalist. Many questions in science and astrology, such as the reform of the calendar, attracted his attention. His other works consisted of theological essays, ascetic or exegetic, questions of ecclesiastical discipline and reform, and of various polemical writings called forth for the most part by the schism.

Whatever reservations may be made as to a certain interested or ambitious side of his character, Pierre d'Ailly, whose devotion to the cause of union and reform is incontestable, remains one of the leading spirits of the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—P. Tschackert, Peter van Ailli (Gotha, 1877); L. Salembier, Petrus de Alliaco (Lille, 1886); H. Denifle et Em. Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, t. iii. (Paris, 1894); N. Valois, La France et le Grand Schisme d'Occident (Paris, 4 vols., 1896-1902); and Bibliotheque de l'ecole des chartes, vol. lxv., 1904, pp. 557-574. (N. V.)

AILSA CRAIG, an island rock at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde, 10 m. W. of Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland. It is of conoidal form, with an irregular elliptic base, and rises abruptly to a height of 1114 ft. The only side from which the rock can be ascended is the east; the other sides being for the most part perpendicular, and generally presenting lofty columnar forms, though not so regular as those of Staffa. This island is composed of micro-granite with riebeckite, of great interest on account of the rare occurrence of this type in Britain. It is comparatively fine-grained and of a greyish colour. Its essential constituents are felspar, quartz and riebeckite—a soda amphibole. The last of these minerals occurs in small irregular patches between the idiomorphic felspars which Dr J. J. H. Tean has found to be a soda orthoclase. The rock is allied to paisanite described by C. A. Osann and has been termed ailsite by Professor M. F. Heddle. It forms part of an intrusive mass which, on the south and west cliffs of the island, has a columnar arrangement and is traversed by dykes of dolerite, most of which run in a north-west direction. The age of this mass is uncertain, as its relations to other rocks are not visible in the island. As riebeckite-granophyre has been found in Skye it may be of Tertiary age. The rock is a favourite material for curling-stones, about three-fourths (according to estimate) of those in use in the countries where the game obtains being made of it. On this account curling-stones are popularly known as "Ailsas'' or "Ailsa Craigs.'' A columnar cave exists towards the northern side of the island, and on the eastern are the remains of a tower, with several vaulted rooms. Two springs occur and some scanty grass affords subsistence to rabbits, and, on the higher levels, to goats. The precipitous parts are frequented by large flocks of solan geese and other sea birds. The lighthouse on the southern side shows a flashing light visible for 13 m. In 1831 the twelfth earl of Cassillis became first marquis of Ailsa, taking the title from the Craig, which was his property. When John Keats was in Girvan during his Scottish tour in 1818 he apostrophized the rock in a fine sonnet.

AIMAK, or EIMAK (Mongolian for "clan,'' or section of a tribe), the name given to certain nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes of Mongolian stock inhabiting the north and north-west Afghan highlands immediately to the north of Herat. They were originally known as "chahar (the four) Eimaks,'' because there were four principal tribes: the Taimani (the predominating element in the population of Ghur), the Ferozkhoi, the Jamshidi and, according to some authorities, the Hazara. The Aimak peoples number upwards of a quarter of a million, and speak a dialect said to be closely related to the Kalmuck. They are Sunnite Mahommedans in distinction from the Hazara who are Shiites. They are predominantly of Iranian or quasi-Iranian blood, while the Hazara are Turanian. They are a bold, wild people and renowned fighters.

AIMARD, GUSTAVE, the pen-name of OLIVIER GLOUX (1818-1883), French novelist, who was born in Paris on the 13th of September 1818. He made use of the materials collected in a roving and adventurous youth and early manhood in numerous romances in the style of J. Fenimore Cooper. Among the best of them are: Les Trappeurs de l'Arkansas (1858); La Grande flibuste (1860); Nuits mexicaines (1863); La Foret vierge (1870). He died in Paris on the 20th of June 1883. Many of his novels have been translated into English.

AIMOIN (c. 960-c. 1010), French chronicler, was born at Villefranche de Longchapt about 960, and in early life entered the monastery of Fleury, where he became a monk and passed the greater part of his life. His chief work is a Historia Francorum, or Libri v. de Gestis Francorum, which deals with the history of the Franks from the earliest times to 653, and was continued by other writers until the middle of the 12th century. It was much in vogue during the middle ages, but its historical value is now regarded as slight. It has been edited by G. Waitz and published in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, Band xxvi. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826-1892). He also wrote a Vita Abbonis, abbatis Floriacensis, the last of a series of lives of the abbots of Fleury, all of which, except the life of Abbo, have been lost. This has been published by J. Mabillon in the Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti (Paris, 1668-1701). Aimoin's third work was the composition of books ii. and iii. of the Miracula sancti Benedicti, the first book of which was written by another monk of Fleury named Adrevald. This also appears in the Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti. Aimoin, who died about 1010, must be distinguished from Aimoin, a monk of St Germain-des-Pres, who wrote De mircalis sancti Germani, and a fragment De Normanorum gestis circa Parisiacam urbem et de divine in eos ultione tempore Caroli calvi. Both of these are published in the Historiae Francorum Scriptores, Tome ii. (Paris, 1639-1649).

See Histoire litteraire de la France, tome vii. (Paris, 1865-1869).

AIN, a department on the eastern frontier of France, formed in 1790 from Bresse, the Pays de Gex, Bugey, Dombes and Valromey, districts of Burgundy. It is bounded N. by the departments of Jura and Saone-et-Loire, W. by Saone-et-Loire and Rhone, S. by Isere, and E. by the departments of Savoie and Haute-Savoie and the Swiss cantons Geneva and Vaud. Pop. (1906) 345,856. Area 2248 sq. m. The department takes its name from the river Ain, which traverses its centre in a southerly direction and separates it roughly into two well-marked physical divisions—a region of mountains to the east. and of plains to the west. The mountainous region is occupied by the southern portion of the Jura, which is divided into parallel chains running north and south and decreasing in height from east to west. The most easterly of these chains, that forming the Pays de Gex in the extreme north-east of the department, contains the Cret de la Neige (6653 ft.) and other of the highest summits in the whole range. The district of Bugey occupies the triangle formed by the Rhone in the south-east of the depart- . ment. West of the Ain, with the exception of the district covered by the Revermont, the westernmost chain of the Jura, the country is flat, consisting in the north of the south portion of the Bresse, in the south of the marshy Dombes. The chief rivers of the eastern region are the Valserine and the Seran, right-hand tributaries of the Rhone, which forms the eastern and southern boundary of the department; and the Albarine and Oignin, left-hand aflluents of the Ain. The Bresse is watered by the Veyle and the Reyssouze, both flowing into the Saone, which washes the western limit of the department. The climate is cold in the eastern and central districts of Ain, but it is on the whole healthy, except in the Dombes. The average rainfall is about 38 in. The soil in the valleys and plains of the department, especially in the Bresse, is fertile, producing large quantities of wheat, as well as oats, buckwheat and maize. East of the Ain, forests of fir and oak abound on the mountains, the lower slopes of which give excellent pasture for sheep and cattle, and much cheese is produced. Horse-raising is carried on in the Dombes. The pigs and fowls of the Bresse and the geese and turkeys of the Dombes are largely exported. The vineyards of Bugey and Revermont yield good wines. The chief mineral product is the asphalt of the mines of Seyssel on the eastern frontier, besides which potter's clay, building stone, hydraulic lime and cement are produced in the department. There are many corn and saw mills and the wood-working industry is important. Silk fabrics, coarse woollen cloth, paper and clocks are manufactured. Live-stock and agricultural products are exported; the chief imports are wood and raw silk. The department is within the judicial circumscription of the appeal court of Lyons and the educational circumscription (academie) of Lyons. It forms part of the archiepiscopal province of Besancon. The Rhone and the Saone are navigable for considerable distances in the department; the chief railway is that of the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee Company, whose line from Macon to Culoz traverses the department. Ain is divided into five arrondissements—those of Bourg and Trevoux in the west, and those of Gex, Nantua and Belley in the east; containing in all 36 cantons and 455 communes. Bourg is the capital and Belley is the seat of a bishop. Jujurieux, in the arrondissement of Nantua, has the most important silk factory in the department, occupying over 1000 workpeople. Bellegarde on the eastern frontier is an industrial centre; it has a manufactory of wood-pulp, and saw and flour mills, power for which is obtained from the waters of the Rhone, Oyonnax and its environs, north of Nantua, are noted for the production of articles in wood and horn, especially combs. St Rambert, in the arrondissement of Belley, besides being of industrial importance for its manufactures of silk and paper, possesses the remains of a Benedictine abbey, powerful in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. The Gothic church of Ambronay in the arrondissement of Belley, the church of St Paul de Varax (about 9 m. S.W. of Bourg), a building in the Romanesque style of Burgundy, and that of Nantua (12th century), are of architectural interest. Ferney, 4 m. S.W. of Gex, is famous as the residence of Voltaire from 1758-1778.

AINGER, ALFRED (1837-1904), English divine and man of letters, was born in London on the 9th of February 1837, the son of an architect. He was educated at King's College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was ordained in 1860 to a curacy at Alrewas, near Rugeley. There he remained until 1864, when he became an assistant master at the Sheffield Collegiate School. His connexion with the Temple church, in London, began in 1866, when he was appointed reader; and in 1894 he succeeded Dr Vaughan as master. In 1887 he was presented to a canonry in Bristol cathedral, and he was chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. He died on the 8th of February 1904. Canon Ainger's gentle wit and humour, his generosity and lovable disposition, endeared him to a wide circle. In literature his name is chiefly associated with his sympathetic appreciation of Charles Lamb and Thomas flood. His works include: Charles Lamb (1882) and Crabbe (1903) in the "English Men of Letters'' series; editions of Lamb's Essays of Elia (1883) and of his Letters (1888; 2nd ed., 1904), of the Poems (1897) of Thomas Hood, with a biographical introduction; The Life and Works of Charles Lamb (12 vols., 1899-1900), articles on Tennyson and Du Maurier in the Dictionary of National Biography; The Gospel and Human Life (1904), sermons; Lectures and Essays (2 vols., 1905), edited by the Rev. H. C. Beeching.

See also Edith Sichel, The Life and Letters of Canon Ainger (1906).

AINMULLER, MAXIMILIAN EMMANUEL (1807-1870), German artist and glass-painter, was born at Munich on the 14th of February 1807. By the advice of Gartner, director of the royal porcelain manufactory, he devoted himself to the study of glass-painting, both as a mechanical process and as an art, and in 1828 he was appointed director of the newly-founded royal painted-glass manufactory at Munich. The method which he gradually perfected there was a development of the enamel process adopted in the Renaissance, and consisted in actually painting the design upon the glass, which was subjected, as each colour was laid on, to carefully-adjusted heating. The earliest specimens of Ainmuller's work are to be found in the cathedral of Regensburg. With a few exceptions, all the windows in Glasgow cathedral are from his hand. Specimens may also be seen in St Paul's cathedral, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Cologne cathedral contains some of his finest productions. Ainmuller had considerable skill as an oil-painter, especially in interiors, his pictures of the Chapel Royal at Windsor and of Westminster Abbey being much admired. He died on the 9th of December 1870.

AINSWORTH, HENRY (1571-1622), English Nonconformist divine and scholar, was born of yeoman stock in 1570/1 at Swanton Morley, Norfolk. He was for four years from December 1587 a scholar of Caius College, Cambridge, and, after associating with the Puritan party in the Church, eventually joined the Separatists. Driven abroad about the year 1593, he found a home in "a blind lane at Amsterdam.'' He acted as "porter'' to a scholarly bookseller in that city, who, on discovering his skill in the Hebrew language, made him known to his countrymen. When part of the London church, of which Francis Johnson (then in prison) was pastor, reassembled in Amsterdam, Ainsworth was chosen as their doctor or teacher. In 1596 he took the lead in drawing up a confession of their faith, which he reissued in Latin in 1598 and dedicated to the various universities of Europe (including St Andrews, Scotland). Johnson joined his flock in 1597, and in 1604 he and Ainsworth composed An Apology or Defence of such true Christians as are commonly but unjustly called Brownists. The task of organizing the church was not easy and dissension was rife. Of Ainsworth it may be said that, though often embroiled in controversy, he never put himself forward; yet he was the most steadfast and cultured champion of the principles represented by the early Congregationalists. Amid all the strife of controversy, he steadily pursued his rabbinical studies. The combination was so unique that many, like the encyclopaedists L. Moreri and J. H. Zedler, have made two Henry Ainsworths—one Dr Henry Ainsworth, a learned biblical commentator; the other H. Ainsworth, an arch-heretic and "the ringleader of the Separatists at Amsterdam.'' Some confusion has also been occasioned through his not unfriendly controversy with one John Ainsworth, who abjured the Anglican for the Roman church. In 1608 Ainsworth answered Richard Bernard's The Separatist Schisme. But his ablest and most arduous minor work in controversy was his reply to John Smyth (commonly called "the Se-Baptist''), entitled a Defence of Holy Scripture, Worship and Ministry used in the Christian Churches separated from Antichrist, against the Challenges, Cavils and Contradictions of Mr Smyth (1609). In 1610 he was forced reluctantly to withdraw, with a large part of their church, from F. Johnson and those who adhered to him. For some time a difference of principle, as to the church's right to revise its officers' decisions, had been growing between them, Ainsworth taking the more Congregational view. (See CONGREGATIONALISM.) But in spirit he remained a man of peace. His memory abides through his rabbinical learning. The ripe fruit of many years' labour appeared in his Annotations—on Genesis (1616); Exodus (1617); Leviticus (1618); Numbers (1619); Deuteronomy (1619); Psalms (including a metrical version, 1612); Song of Solomon (1623). These were collected in folio in 1627, and again in 1639, and later in various forms. From the outset the Annotations took a commanding place, especially among continental scholars, and he established for English nonconformity a tradition of culture and scholarship. There is no probability about the narrative given by Neal in his History of the Puritans (ii. 47) that he was poisoned by certain Jews. He died in 1622, or early in 1623, for in that year was published his Seasonable Discourse, or a Censure upon a Dialogue of the Anabaptists, in which the editor speaks of him as a departed worthy.

LITERATURE.—John Worthington's Diary (Chetham Society), by Crossley, i. 263-266; works of John Robinson (1851); H. M. Dexter, Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years (1880); W. E. A. Axon, H. Ainsworth, the Puritan Commentator (1889); F. J. Powicke, Henry Barrow and the Exiled Church of Amsterdam (1900), J. H. Shakespeare, Baptist and Congregational Pioneers (1906).

AINSWORTH, ROBERT (1660-1743), English schoolmaster and author, was born at Eccles, near Manchester, in September 1660. After teaching for some time at Lever's Grammar School in Bolton, he removed to London, where he conducted a boarding-school, first at Bethnal Green and then at Hackney. He soon made a moderate fortune which gave him leisure to pursue his classical studies. Ainsworth's name is associated with his Latin-English Dictionary, begun in 1714, and published in 1736 as Thesaurus linguae Latinae compendiarius. It was long extensively used in schools, and often reprinted, the later editions being revised and enlarged by other hands, but it is now superseded. Ainsworth was also the author of some useful works on classical antiquities, and a sensible treatise on education, entitled The most Natural and Easy Way of Institution (1698), in which he advocates the teaching of Latin by conversational methods and deprecates punishment of any sort. He died in London on the 4th of April 1743.

AINSWORTH, WILLIAM HARRISON (1805-1882), English novelist, son of Thomas Ainsworth, solicitor, was born at Manchester on the 4th of February 1805. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and articled to the firm of which his father was a member, proceeding to London in 1824 to complete his legal training at the Inner Temple. At the age of twenty-one he married a daughter of John Ebers the publisher, and started in his father-in-law's line of business. This, however, soon proved unprofitable and he decided to attempt literary work. A novel called Sir John Chiverton, in which he appears to have had a share, had attracted the praise of Sir Walter Scott, and this encouragement decided him to take up fiction as a career. In 1834 he published Rookwood, which had an immediate success, and thenceforth he was always occupied with the compilation of "historical'' novels. He published about forty such stories, of which the best-known are Jack Sheppard (1839), The Tower Oglondon (1840), Guy Fawkes (1841), Old St Paul's (1841) and Windsor Castle (1843). He edited Bentley's Miscellany, in which Jack Sheppard was published as a serial, and in 1842 he became proprietor of Ainsworth's Magazine. In 1853 it ceased to appear, and Ainsworth bought the New Monthly Magazine. He continued his literary activity until his death, but his later stories were less striking than the earlier ones. He died at Reigate on the 3rd of January 1882 and was buried at Kensal Green. Ainsworth had a lively talent for plot, and his books have many attractive qualities. The glorification of Dick Turpin in Rookwood, and of Jack Sheppard in the novel that bears his name, caused considerable outcry among straitlaced elders. In his later novels Ainsworth confined himself to heroes less open to criticism. His style was not without archaic affectation and awkwardness, but when his energies were aroused by a striking situation he could be brisk, vigorous and impressive. He did a great deal to interest the less educated classes in the historical romances of their country, and his tales were invariably instructive, clean and manly.

AINTAB (anc. Doliche), a town in the vilayet of Aleppo and ancient Cyrrhestica district of N. Syria. Pop. 45,000, two-thirds Moslem. The site of Doliche, famous for its worship of Baal (Zeus Dolichenus), adopted by the Seleucids and eventually spread all over the Roman empire, lies at Duluk, two hours N.W.; but nothing is to be seen there except a mound. The place was probably of Hittite origin and does not appear to have been settled by Greeks. The bazaars of Aintab are a great centre for "Hittite'' antiquities, found at various sites from Sakchegozu on the west to Jerablus on the east. The modern town lies in the open treeless valley of the Sajur, a tributary of the Euphrates, and on the right bank, 65 m. north-east of Aleppo, with which it is connected by a chaussee, passing through Kulis. This road proceeds east to the great crossing of Euphrates at Birejik, and thus Aintab lies on the highway between N. Syria and Urfa-Mosul and has much transit trade and numerous khans. In the middle ages its strong castle (Hamtab) was an important strategic point, taken by Saladin about A.D. 1183; and it supplied the last base from which Ibrahim Pasha marched in 1839 to win his decisive victory over the Turksat Nezib, about 25 m. distant north-east. Lying high (3500 ft.) and swept by purifying winds, Aintab is a comparatively clean and healthy spot, though not free from ophthalmia and the "Aleppo button,'' and it has been selected by the American Mission Board as its centre for N. Syria "Central Turkey College,'' educational and medical, lies on high ground west. It was burnt down in 1891, but rebuilt; it has a dependency for girls within the town. Thanks to its presence the Armenian protestants are a large and rich community, which suffered less in the massacre of 1895 than the Gregorians. There is a small Episcopalian body, which has a large unfinished church, and a schismatic "catholicos,'' who has vainly tried to gain acceptance into the Anglican communion. There is also a flourishing Franciscan mission. Striped cloths and pekmez, a sweet paste made from grapes, are the principal manufactures; and tobacco and cereals the principal cultures. The town is unusually well and solidly built, good stone being obtained near at hand. The Moslem inhabitants are mainly of Turkoman origin, and used to owe fealty to chieftains of the family of Chapan Oglu, whose headquarters were at Yuzgat in Cappadocia. (D. G. H.)

AINU ("man''), a race inhabiting the northernmost islands of Japan. Little definite is known about their earliest history, but it is improbable that they are, as has been urged, the aborigines of Japan. The most accurate researches go to prove that they were immigrants, who reached Yezo from the Kuriles, and subsequently crossing Tsugaru strait, colonized a great part of the main island of Japan, exterminating a race of pit-dwellers to whom they gave the name of koro-pok-guru (men with sunken places). These koro-pok-guru were of such small stature as to be considered dwarfs. They wore skins of animals for clothing, and that they understood the potter's art and used flint arrow-heads is clearly proved by excavations at the sites of their pits. The Ainu, on the contrary, never had any knowledge of pottery. Ultimately the Ainu, coming into contact with the Japanese, who had immigrated from the south and west, were driven northward into the island of Yezo, where, as well as in the Kuriles and in the southern part of Sakhalin, they are still found in some numbers. When, at the close of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, Russian enterprises drew the attention of the Japanese government to the northern districts of the empire, the Tokugawa shoguns adopted towards the Ainu a policy of liberality and leniency consistent with the best principles of modern colonization. But the doom of unfitness appears to have begun to overtake the race long ago. History indicates that in ancient times they were fierce fighters, able to offer a stout resistance to the incomparably better armed and more civilized Japanese. To-day they are drunken, dirty, spiritless folk, whom it is difficult to suppose capable of the warlike role they once played. Their number, between 16,000 and 17,000, is virtually stationary. The Ainu are somewhat taller than the Japanese, stoutly built, well proportioned, with dark-brown eyes, high cheek-bones, short broad noses and faces lacking length. The hairiness of the Ainu has been much exaggerated. They are not more hairy than many Europeans. Never shaving after a certain age, the men have full beards and moustaches, but the stories of Ainu covered with hair like a bear are quite unjustified by facts. Men and women alike cut their hair level with the shoulders at the sides of the head, but trim it semicircularly behind. The women tattoo their mouths, arms, and sometimes their foreheads, using for colour the smut deposited on a pot hung over a fire of birch bark. Their original dress is a robe spun from the bark of the elm tree. It has long sleeves, reaches nearly to the feet, is folded round the body and tied with a girdle of the same material. Females wear also an undergarment of Japanese cloth. In winter the skins of animals are worn, with leggings of deerskin and boots made from the skin of dogs or salmon. Both sexes are fond of ear-rings, which are said to have been made of grape-vine in former times, but are now purchased from the Japanese, as also are bead necklaces, which the women prize highly. Their food is meat, whenever they can procure it—the flesh of the bear, the fox, the wolf, the badger, the ox or the horse—fish, fowl, millet, vegetables, herbs and roots. They never eat raw fish or flesh, but always either boil or roast it. Their habitations are reed-thatched huts, the largest 20 ft. square, without partitions and having a fireplace in the centre. There is no chimney, but only a hole at the angle of the roof; there is one window on the eastern side and there are two doors. Public buildings do not exist, whether in the shape of inn, meeting-place or temple. The furniture of their dwellings is exceedingly scanty. They have no chairs, stools or tables, but sit on the floor, which is covered with two layers of mats, one of rush, the other of flag; and for beds they spread planks, hanging mats around them on poles, and employing skins for coverlets. The men use chop-sticks and moustache-lifters when eating; the women have wooden spoons. Uncleanliness is characteristic of the Ainu, and all their intercourse with the Japanese has not improved them in that respect. The Rev. John Batchelor, in his Notes on the Ainu, says that he lived in one Ainu habitation for six weeks on one occasion, and for two months on another, and that he never once saw personal ablutions performed, or cooking or eating utensils washed.

Not having been at any period acquainted with the art of writing, they have no literature and are profoundly ignorant. But at schools established for them by the Japanese in recent times, they have shown that their intellectual capacity is not deficient. No distinct conception of a universe enters into their cosmology. They picture to themselves many floating worlds, yet they deduce the idea of rotundity from the course of the sun, and they imagine that the "Ainu world'' rests on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes. It is scarcely possible to doubt that this fancy is derived from the Japanese, who used to hold an identical theory. The Ainu believe in a supreme Creator, but also in a sun-god, a moon-god, a water-god and a mountain-god, deities whose river is the Milky Way, whose voices are heard in the thunder and whose glory is reflected in the lightning. Their chief object of actual worship appears to be the bear. Miss Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop) writes: "The peculiarity which distinguishes their rude mythology is the worship of the bear, the Yezo bear being one of the finest of his species. But it is impossible to understand the feelings by which this cult is prompted, for although they worship the animal after their fashion and set up its head in their villages, yet they trap it, kill it, eat it and sell its skin. There is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of the feeling which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and the Ainos may be distinguished as bear-worshippers, and their greatest religious festival or saturnalia as the Festival of the Bear.... Some of their rude chants are in praise of the bear, and their highest eulogy on a man is to compare him to a bear.'' They have no priests by profession. The village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary; ceremonies confined to making libations of wine, uttering short prayers and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them, much as the Japanese set up the well-known gohei (sacred offerings) at certain spots. The Ainu gives thanks to the gods before eating, and prays to the deity of fire in time of sickness. He thinks that his spirit is immortal, and that it will be rewarded hereafter in heaven or punished in hell, both of which places are beneath the earth, hell being the land of volcanoes; but he has no theory as to a resurrection of the body or metempsychosis. He preserves a tradition about a flood which seems to be the counterpart of the Biblical deluge, and about an earthquake which lasted a hundred days, produced the three volcanoes of Yezo and created the island by bridging the waters that had previously separated it into two parts.

The Ainu are now governed by Japanese laws and judged by Japanese tribunals, but in former times their affairs were administered by hereditary chiefs, three in each village, and for administrative purposes the country was divided into three districts, Saru, Usu and Ishikari, which were under the ultimate control of Saru, though the relations between their respective inhabitants were not close and intermarriages were avoided. The functions of judge were not entrusted to these chiefs; an indefinite number of a community's members sat in judgment upon its criminals. Capital punishment did not exist, nor was imprisonment resorted to, beating being considered a sufficient and final penalty, except in the case of murder, when the nose and ears of the assassin were cut off or the tendons of his feet severed. Little as the Japanese and the Ainu have in common, intermarriages are not infrequent, and at Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast, many children of such marriages may be seen. Doenitz, Hilgendorf and Dr B. Scheube, arguing from a minute investigation of the physical traits of the Ainu, have concluded that they are Mongolians; according to Professor A. H. Keane the Ainu "are quite distinct from the surrounding Mongolic peoples, and present several remarkable physical characters which seem to point to a remote connexion with the Caucasic races. Such are a very full beard, shaggy or wavy black or dark-brown hair, sometimes covering the back and chest; a somewhat fair or even white complexion, large nose, straight eyes and regular features, often quite handsome and of European type. They seem to be a last remnant of the Neolithic peoples, who ranged in prehistoric times across the northern hemisphere from the British Isles to Manchuria and Japan. They are bear-worshippers, and have other customs in common with the Manchurian aborigines, but the language is entirely different, and they have traditions of a time when they were the dominant people in the surrounding lands.'' It should be noted finally that the Ainu are altogether free from ferocity or exclusiveness, and that they treat strangers with gentle kindness.

See Rev. John Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folk-lore (London, 1901); Romyn Hitchcock, The Ainos of Japan (Washington, 1892); H. von Siebold, Uber die Aino (Berlin, 1881); Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop), Korea and her Neighbours (1898); Basil Hall Chamberlain, Language, Mythology and Geographical Nomenclature of Japan viewed in the Light of Aino Studies and Aino Fairy-tales (1895).

AIR, or ASBEN, a country of West Africa, lying between 15 deg. and 19 deg. N. and 6 deg. and 10 deg. E. It is within the Sahara, of which it forms one of the most fertile regions. The northern portion of the country is mountainous, some of the peaks rising to a height of 5000 ft. Richly wooded hollows and extensive plains are interspersed between the hills. The mimosa, the dum palm and the date are abundant. Some of the plains afford good pasturage for camels, asses, goats and cattle; others are desert tablelands. In the less frequented districts wild animals abound, notably the lion and the gazelle. The country generally is of sandstone or granite formation, with occasional trachyte and basaltic ranges. There are no permanent rivers; but during the rainy season, from August to October, heavy floods convert the water-courses in the hollows of the mountains into broad and rapid streams. Numerous wells supply the wants of the people and their cattle. To the south of this variegated region lies a desert plateau, 2000 ft. above sea-level, destitute of water, and tenanted only by the wild ox, the ostrich and the giraffe. Still farther south is the fairly fertile district of Damerghu, of which Zinder is the chief town. Little of the soil is under cultivation except in the neighbourhood of the villages. Millet, dates, indigo and senna are the principal productions. The great bulk of the food supplies is brought from Damerghu, and the materials for clothing are also imported. A great caravan annually passes through Air, consisting of several thousand camels, carrying salt from Bilma to the Hausa states.