Various

“ Advertising on a small scale is a practice as old as commerce; but modern advertising on a large scale cannot be dated further back than 1785, when the Times was founded. The last thirty years have witnessed a great increase in the importance of advertisements as part of the policy of a progressive business. Much more intelligence and vastly more money is now spent on advertising than ever was before. America led the way, but the British are not now far behind in the number and ingenuity of their advertisements. ”

“ In accordance with the subjective character of his system he denies an absolute conception of beauty, but his detailed treatment of the subject is inconsistent with the denial. Thus he attributes a beauty to single colours and tones, not on any plea of complexity, but on the ground of purity. He holds also that the highest meaning of beauty is to symbolize moral good, and arbitrarily attaches moral characters to the seven primary colours. The value of art is mediate, and the beauty of art is inferior to that of nature. ”

“ The Indian Ocean receives numerous rivers; but the only great river of South Africa which enters that ocean is the Zambezi, the fourth in size of the continent, and having in its course the Victoria Falls, one of the greatest waterfalls in the world. In Southern Africa also, but flowing westward and entering the Atlantic, is the Congo, which takes its origin from a series of lakes and marshes in the interior, is fed by great tributaries, and is the first in volume of all the African rivers, carrying to the ocean more water than the Mississippi. ”

“ Aliens have been repeatedly the objects of legislation in Britain, and the tendency at the present day is to communicate some of the rights of citizenship to aliens, and to widen the definition of subjects. According to the Act of 1870 that now regulates the matter, real and personal property of every description may be acquired, held, and disposed of by an alien, in the same manner in all respects as by a natural-born British subject. ”

“ Affin′ity, in chemistry, the force by which unlike kinds of matter combine so intimately that the properties of the constituents are lost, and a compound with new properties is produced. Of the force itself we know little or nothing. It is not the same under all conditions, being very much modified by circumstances, especially temperature. The usual effect of increase of temperature is to diminish affinity and ultimately to cause the separation of a compound into its constituents; and there is probably for every compound a temperature above which it could not exist, but would be broken up. ”

“ In Great Britain at the present day, however, it is punishable only by ecclesiastical censure. The aggrieved husband, however, can obtain damages against his wife's seducer. In England a man can obtain a dissolution of his marriage on the ground of his wife's adultery, and a wife can obtain a judicial separation on the ground of her husband's adultery, or a dissolution of the marriage if the offence is coupled with cruelty, desertion, or bigamy. In Scotland it is not necessary to prove cruelty. In the United States the punishment of adultery has varied materially at different times. ”

“ Air-craft for this purpose have been likened to long-range guns, with the advantage of greater precision, because the target is in view, and very much longer effective range—the Germans, for example, used to raid London, and on one occasion Edinburgh, from bases situated in North Germany and on the Schleswig coast. Air-raids are of great value in affecting the moral of the enemy country by bringing home the effects of war in its most terrifying aspect to the civilian population at home, and thus causing the dislocation of traffic and diminishing the output of munitions. ”

“ The interior of Africa is as yet imperfectly known, but we know enough of the continent as a whole to be able to point to some general features that characterize it. One of these is that almost all round it at no great distance from the sea, and, roughly speaking, parallel with the coast-line, we find ranges of mountains or elevated lands forming the outer edges of interior plateaux. ”

“ Ajmere, Ajmir, or Ajmer, a British commissionership or province in India, Rajputána, divided into the two districts of Ajmere and Mairwara (or Merwara) ; area, 2711 sq. miles. The surface of the province, which is entirely surrounded by native States, is hilly in the north and west, where there is a branch of the Aravali range, but level in the south and east. The soil is partly fertile, but there are large barren sandy plains, and there are no rivers of any importance. There are a large number of tanks which collect the water of small streams, and are useful for irrigation. ”

“ These people are divided into branches, some of which have displayed a considerable aptitude for civilization. When the Europeans became acquainted with the New World, Mexico, Central America, and part of S. America were inhabited by populations which had made great advances in many things that pertain to civilized life, dwelling in large and well-built cities under a settled form of government, and practising agriculture and the mechanical arts. Ever since the discovery of America at the close of the fifteenth century Europeans of all nations have crowded into it ”

“ Hydrogen is, when mixed with air, highly inflammable, and helium has therefore been suggested as a substitute. This has a lift, when pure, of about 65 lb. per 1000 cu. feet, but is only found in a few places in America and is therefore at present too expensive to be used in quantities. The lift of any given quantity of hydrogen depends upon the difference between its weight and that of an equal volume of air. As the amount, and therefore weight, of air contained in a given space varies with the barometric pressure and temperature, the lift of hydrogen given above varies also. ”

“ Among the alchemists it was generally thought necessary to find a substance which, containing the original principle of all matter, should possess the power of dissolving all substances into their elements. This general solvent, or menstruum universale, which at the same time was to possess the power of removing all the seeds of disease out of the human body and renewing life, was called the philosophers' stone, lapis philosophorum, and its pretended possessors were known as adepts. ”

“ The Academy of Science in Berlin was founded by Frederick I in 1700. It was opened in 1711 and had Leibnitz as its first president. In Britain the name of academy, in the more dignified sense of the term, is confined almost exclusively to certain institutions for the promotion of the fine arts, such as the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Scottish Academy. The Royal Academy of Arts (usually called simply the Royal Academy) was founded in London in 1768, "for the purpose of cultivating and improving the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture". ”

“ Among the principal doctrines of the Albigenses was the belief in the existence of two principles, good and evil, the creators of the spiritual and material worlds. Since all matter is under the control of the evil principle, maintained the Albigenses, all flesh is evil. The extinction of bodily life, therefore, the deliverance of the soul from the prison-house of the body, should be the aim of man. ”

“ In North America the white population is mainly of British origin, though to a considerable extent it also consists of Germans, Scandinavians, &c., and the descendants of such. In Central and South America the prevailing white nationality is the Spanish and Portuguese. In the extreme north are the Eskimos—a scattered and stunted race closely allied to some of the peoples of Northern Asia. That the aboriginal inhabitants of America passed over from Asia is tolerably certain, but when and from what part we do not know. ”

“ In any given case the digestive power of the individual is to be considered in order to determine whether a particular aliment is wholesome or not. In general, therefore, we can only say that that aliment is healthy [111] which is easily soluble, and is suited to the power of digestion of the individual. Man is fitted to derive nourishment both from animal and vegetable aliment, but can live exclusively on either. The nations of the North incline generally more to animal aliments; those of the South, and the Orientals, more to vegetable. ”

“ It is only in modern times that alcohol has been isolated and its properties examined. Alcohol is now prepared in enormous quantities, both for industrial purposes and for the preparation of alcoholic beverages, from substances rich in sugar or in starch. Potatoes and maize form the main source of alcohol. These are treated with steam under pressure in specially-constructed tanks to extract starchy materials. The starch so liberated is then fermented by means of a substance diastase. This treatment transforms sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. ”

“ There was, however, another school which believed in the future of machines which would be themselves lighter than air. The idea in the minds of the experimenters of this school was in the early days the replacing of the air in brass globes by a vacuum. If the brass were thin enough it was believed that the globe would then be sufficiently light to rise. It was, however, not realized that under such circumstances the globe would inevitably collapse under the pressure of the atmosphere with no corresponding internal pressure to withstand it. ”

“ While the ancient Greek alphabet gave rise to the ordinary Greek alphabet and the Latin, the Greek alphabet of later times furnished elements for the Coptic, the Gothic, and the old Slavic alphabets. The Latin characters are now employed by a great many nations, such as the Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch, the German, the Hungarian, the Polish, &c., each nation having introduced such modifications or additions as are necessary to express the sound of the language peculiar to it. ”

“ Within the circuit of the walls are two churches, a number of mean houses, and some straggling gardens, besides the palace of Charles V and the celebrated Moorish palace which is often distinctively spoken of as the Alhambra. This building, to which the celebrity of the site is entirely due, was the royal palace of the Kings of Granada. The greater part of the present building belongs to the first half of the fourteenth century. In the course of centuries, both through neglect and acts of vandalism, the beauty of the Alhambra has suffered considerably. ”

“ The position of aliens depends upon the laws of the respective countries, but generally speaking aliens owe a local allegiance, and are bound equally with natives to obey all general rules for the preservation of order which do not relate specially to citizens. Aliens have been often treated with great harshness by the laws of some States. Thus in France there long existed what was known as the droit d'aubaine, a law which claimed for the benefit of the State the effects of deceased foreigners leaving no heirs who were natives. ”

“ As an air-ship rises from the ground, the density, and therefore pressure, of the air decreases, which causes the hydrogen in the envelope to expand proportionately. Rise in temperature has the same effect. When an air-ship ascends, the gas therefore expands, and at a certain point would burst the envelope were valves not provided to allow some of the gas to escape. It is important to realize that as the expansion occurs at a rate corresponding to the decrease in density no alteration in lift occurs so long as gas is not lost through the valves. ”

“ It used to be the doctrine of the English law that natural-born subjects owe an allegiance which is intrinsic and perpetual, and which cannot be divested by any act of their own (Nemo potest exuere patriam) ; but this is no longer the case since the Naturalization Act passed in 1870, A British subject, however, or [114] a child who has acquired a British domicile by the naturalization of an alien parent, cannot in time of war divest himself of British nationality for the purpose of becoming an enemy alien. ”

“ The absenteeism of the Irish nobility, which became worse after the Union with Great Britain and the transfer of Parliament from Dublin to London, has been a constant source of mischief, whilst France before the Revolution, Russia under the Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I, and Hungary in the eighteenth century suffered greatly from the practice. The first statute concerning absentees was passed in the English Parliament in 1379, and in 1729 a tax was levied on all moneys paid out of Ireland. ”

“ Alloy′ is the substance produced by melting together two or more metals. Sometimes a chemical compound is formed, but more generally one metal is interspersed throughout the other, much as sugar is through water in which it is dissolved. In this case the alloy is called a 'solid solution' of one metal in another. Many metals mix together in all proportions, others only in certain proportions, while some will not mix in any proportion. ”

“ The best heat-giver is fat. Albuminous matters are not only the tissue-formers of the body; they also supply the vehicle for the oxygen, inasmuch as it is of such matters that the blood corpuscles are formed. The more red blood corpuscles an animal possesses, the more oxygen can it take into its system, and the more easily and rapidly can it carry on the process of oxidation and develop heat. ”