Various

“ The fundamental principle of his philosophy is that the source of all things is an undefined substance infinite in quantity. The firmament is composed of heat and cold, the stars of air and fire. The sun occupies the highest place in the heavens, has a circumference twenty-eight times larger than the earth, and resembles a cylinder, from which streams of fire issue. The moon is likewise a cylinder, nineteen times larger than the earth. The earth has the shape of a cylinder, and is placed in the midst of the universe, where it remains suspended. ”

“ In its general features Arabia resembles the Sahara, of which it may be considered a continuation. Like the Sahara, it has its wastes of loose sand, its stretches of bare rocks and stones, its mountains devoid of vegetation, its oases with their wells and streams, their palm-groves and cultivated fields—islands of green amidst the surrounding desolation. Rivers proper there are none. ”

“ See European War.
Arts, the name given to certain branches of study in the Middle Ages, originally called the 'liberal arts' to distinguish them from the 'servile arts' or mechanical occupations. These arts were usually given as grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Hence originated the terms 'art classes', 'degrees in arts', 'Master of Arts', &c., still in common use in universities, the faculty of arts being distinguished from those of divinity, law, medicine, or science. See University. ”

“ According to the legend, before her birth Zeus swallowed her mother, and Athena afterwards sprang from the head of Zeus with a mighty war shout and in complete armour. In her character of a wise and prudent warrior she was contrasted with the fierce Ares (Mars) . In the wars of the giants she slew Pallas and Enceladus. In the wars of the mortals she aided and protected heroes. She is also represented as the patroness of the arts of peace. The sculptor, the architect, and the painter, as well as the philosopher, the orator, and the poet, considered her their tutelar deity. ”

“ The selection of these events at any athletic meeting is a somewhat arbitrary one, and the inclusion of those which require strength and skill rather than speed and agility rests more on a traditional than a logical basis. A particular feature which distinguishes these exercises as athletic sports is the presence of the idea of competition; thus running and walking, as isolated exercises, can be called 'sports' only when men compete against one another, although the factor of competition may be only indirectly present, as when an athlete endeavours to beat a record. ”

“ The stress of modern war now makes individual control of large bodies impossible, and the British army is therefore organized both for peace and war in a series of units of ever-increasing size, each under its own commander, who is responsible to his immediate superior for the well-being, training, and leading of his command. Taking the infantry organization as an example, we find that in the lowest stage, that of the 'section', the command is both personal and direct, in that the corporal controls and commands the six men composing his fighting unit personally and directly by word of mouth. ”

“ Animal Worship, a practice found to prevail, or to have prevailed, in the most widely-distant parts of the world, both the Old and the New, but nowhere to such an amazing extent as in ancient Egypt, notwithstanding its high civilization. Nearly all the more important animals found in the country were regarded as sacred in some part of Egypt, and the degree of reverence paid to them was such that throughout Egypt the killing of a hawk or an ibis, whether voluntary or not, was punished with death. The worship, however, was not, except in a few instances, paid to them as actual deities. ”

“ The teaching of art that is given at the present day as a part of ordinary general education attempts little more than a training in the elements of drawing, with some practice in the use of colour. The purpose of the drawing lesson is the attainment of skill in the representation of objects rather than the training of the æsthetic sense, or of artistic judgment or taste. ”

“ It is on the belief in a unity in nature that all inferences from analogy rest. The general inference from analogy is always perfectly valid. Wherever there is resemblance, similarity or identity of cause somewhere may be justly inferred; but to infer the particular cause without particular proof is always to reason falsely. Analogy is of great use and constant application in science, in philosophy, and in the common business of life. ”

“ In a more extended sense the term embraces every branch of knowledge which bears on the origin, religion, laws, languages, science, arts, and literature of ancient peoples. It is to a great extent synonymous with prehistoric annals, as a large if not the principal part of its field of study extends over those periods in the history of the human race in regard to which we possess almost no information derivable from written records. ”

“ It digs a funnel-shaped hole in the driest and finest sand it can find, and when the pit is deep enough, and the sides are quite smooth and sloping, it buries itself at the bottom with only its formidable mandibles projecting, and waits till some luckless insect stumbles over the edge, when it is immediately seized, its juices sucked, and the dead body jerked out. ”

“ Owing to the continual growth of military science, the improvement in arms and means of destruction generally, and the confusion and noise inseparable from a modern battle, the size of the personally-controlled unit has gradually decreased till, in the present day, in the British army, it is accepted as an axiom that no larger number of men than six can be conveniently controlled in battle by one man. ”

“ In Scotland it is called wilful fire-raising, and in both England and Scotland it is a considerable aggravation of the crime if the burning is to defraud insurers.
Art, in its most extended sense, as distinguished from nature on the one hand and from science on the other, has been defined as every regulated operation or dexterity by which organized beings pursue ends which they know beforehand, together with the rules and the result of every such operation or dexterity. Science consists in knowing, art in doing. ”

“ Persia was the dominant Power in Western Asia. Alexander's great empire became broken up into separate kingdoms, which were finally absorbed in the Roman Empire, and this ultimately extended to the Tigris. Soon after the most civilized portions of the three continents had been reduced under one empire, the great event took place which forms the dividing-line of history, the birth of Christ and the spread of Christianity. In A.D. 226 a protracted struggle began between the newer Persian Empire and the Romans, which lasted till the advent of Mahomet, and the conquests of the Arabians. ”

“ Central Asia is the native land of the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, and the goat. Both varieties of the camel, the single and the double humped, are Asiatic. To the inhabitants of Tibet and the higher plateaux of the Himálaya the yak is what the reindeer is to the tribes of the Siberian plain, almost their sole wealth and support. The elephant, of a different species from that of Africa, is a native of tropical Asia. The Asiatic lion, which inhabits Arabia and Persia, and still exists in the north-west of India, is smaller than the African species. ”

“ The first of these—celestial photography—has furnished us with invaluable light-pictures of the sun, moon, and other bodies, and has recorded the existence of myriads of stars invisible even to the best telescopes; while the second, spectrum analysis, now employed by many scientists, reveals to us a knowledge of the physical constituents of the universe, telling us for instance that in the sun (or his atmosphere) there exist many of the elements familiar to us on the earth. ”

“ Animals, further, can subsist on solid food in addition to liquids and gases; but many animals (such as the Tapeworms) live by the mere imbibition of fluids which are absorbed by their tissues, such forms possessing no distinct digestive system. Animals require a due supply of oxygen gas for their sustenance, this gas being used in respiration. Plants, on the contrary, require carbonic acid. The animal exhales or gives out carbonic acid as the part result of its tissue-waste, whilst the plant, taking in this gas, is enabled to decompose it into its constituent carbon and oxygen. ”

“ In the south-western countries of Asia and in Egypt, in some districts of Southern Europe, as in Spain, and in Kentucky and Peru, great attention has been paid to selection and interbreeding, with a result no less remarkable than in the case of the horse. Thus in Syria there appear to be four distinct breeds: a light and graceful animal used by ladies, an Arab breed reserved for the saddle, an ass of heavier build in use for ploughing and draft purposes, and the large Damascus breed. The efforts made to raise the deteriorated British breed have only been partially successful. ”

“ Until comparatively recently, such sports have been the prerogative of the British Isles; but during the last thirty years the United States have adopted them with enormous enthusiasm and success, and more recently still the vogue has extended throughout the Continent, and good results have been obtained by representatives from France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Sweden, and Finland, as well as from all the Colonies. In this country no school, no matter how small or how humble its pretensions, fails to hold its athletic meeting annually. ”

“ If a person having a certain capital, and intending to spend this capital and the income of it during his own life, could know precisely how long he should live, he might lend his capital at a certain rate during his life, and by taking every year, besides the interest, a certain amount of the capital, he might secure the same annual amount for his support during his life in such manner that he should have the same sum to spend every year, and consume precisely his whole capital during his life. ”

“ Anach ́aris, a genus of plants, nat. ord. Hydrocharidaceæ, the species of which grow in ponds and streams of fresh water; water-thyme or water-weed. It appeared in Britain in the nineteenth century. A. Alsinastrum has been introduced from North America into European rivers, canals, and ponds, and by its rapid growth in dense tangled masses tends to choke them so as materially to impede navigation. The plants in our canals perfect no seed, their spread being due to vegetative vigour only. ”

“ Every variety of climate may be experienced in Asia, but as a whole it is marked by extremes of heat and cold and by great dryness, this in particular being the case with vast regions in the centre of the continent and distant from the sea. The great lowland region of Siberia has a short but very hot summer, and a long but intensely cold winter, the rivers and their estuaries being fast bound with ice, and at a certain depth the soil is hard frozen all the year round. ”