ALYATTES, king of Lydia (609-560 B.C.), the real founder of the Lydian empire, was the son of Sadyattes, of the house of the Mermnadae. For several years he continued the war against Miletus begun by his father, but was obliged to turn his attention to the Medes and Babylonians. On the 28th of May 585, during a battle on the Halys between him and Cyaxares, king of Media, an eclipse of the sun took place; hostilities were suspended, peace concluded, and the Halys fixed as the boundary between the two kingdoms. Alyattes drove the Cimmerii (see SCYTHIA) from Asia, subdued the Carians, and took several Ionian cities (Smyrna, Colophon). He was succeeded by his son Croesus. His tomb still exists on the plateau between lake Gygaea and the

river Hermus to the north of Sardis-a large mound of earth with a substructure of huge stones. It was excavated by

Spiegelthal in 1854, who found that it covered a large vault of finely-cut marble blocks approached by a flat-roofed passage of

the same stone from the south. The sarcophagus and its contents had been removed by early plunderers of the tomb, all that was left being some broken alabaster vases, pottery and charcoal. On the summit of the mound were large phalli of stone.

See A. von Ölfers, "Über die lydischen Königsgräber bei Sardes," Abh. Berl. Ak., 1858. ALYPIUS, a Greek writer on music whose works, with those of six others, were collected and published with a commentary and explanatory notes (Antiquae Musicae Auctores Septem, Amstel., 1652), by Mark Meibomius (1630-1711). He is said to have written before Euclid and Ptolemy; and Cassiodorus arranges his Introduction to Music between those of Nicomachus and Gaudentius. The work consists solely of a list of symbols of the various scales and modes, and is probably only a fragment. ALYPIUS OF ANTIOCH, a geographer of the 4th century, who ALYPIUS OF ANTIOCH, a geographer of the 4th century, who was sent by the emperor Julian into Britain as first prefect, and was afterwards commissioned to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem. Among the letters of Julian are two (29 and 30) addressed to Alypius; one inviting him to Rome, the other thanking him for a geographical treatise, which no longer exists.

See also Ammianus Marcellinus xxiii. 1, § 2. ALYTES, the midwife toad, first discovered by P. Demours in 1741, on the border of a small pond in the Jardin des Plantes, in the very act of parturition which has rendered it famous, and described as Petit crapaud mâle accoucheur de sa femelle. Alytes obstetricans is of special interest as the first known example of paternal solicitude in Batrachians, and although many no less wonderful cases of nursing instinct have since been revealed to us, it remains the only one among European forms.

Alytes obstetricans is a small toad-like Batrachian, two inches in length, of dull greyish coloration, plump form with warty skin and large eyes with vertical pupils. Although toad-like it is not really related to the toads proper, but belongs to the family Discoglossidae, characterized by a circular, adherent tongue, teeth in the upper jaw and on the palate, short but distinct ribs on the anterior vertebrae, and convex-concave vertebrae. It inhabits France, Belgium, Switzerland, Western Germany (eastwards to the Weser), Spain and Portugal. A second species, A. cisternasii, occurs in Spain and Portugal.

Alytes is nocturnal and slow in its movements. It is thoroughly terrestrial, selecting for its retreat in the daytime holes made by smali mammals, or interstices between stones. Towards evening it reveals its presence by a clear whistling note, which has often been compared to the sound of a little bell, or to a chime when produced by numerous individuals. The breeding season lasts throughout spring and summer, and the female is able to spawn two, three or even four times in the year. Pairing and oviposition take place on land; the male seizes the female round the waist. The eggs are large and yellow, and produced in two rosary-like strings, as if strung together by elastic filaments continuous with the gelatinous capsules. After impregnation, the male twists them round his legs and returns to his usual retreat, going about at night in order to feed himself and to keep up the moisture of the eggs, even resorting to a short immersion in the water during exceptionally dry nights. The development of the embryo within the egg takes about three weeks. When the time for

64

eclosion has come, the male enters the water with his burden; the larvae, in the full tadpole condition, measuring 14 to 17 millimetres, bite their way through their tough envelope, which is not abandoned by the father until all the young are liberated, and complete in the ordinary way their metamorphosis. The tadpoles grow to a large size considering that of the adult, the body equalling in size a sparrow's or even a small pigeon's egg, and they often remain more than a year in that condition. See A. de l'Isle, Mémoire sur les mœurs et l'accouchement de l'Alytes obstetricans," Ann. Sci. Nat. (6) iii. 1876; G. A. Boulenger. Tailless Batrachians of Europe (Ray Society, 1897). (G. A. B.) Darmstadt, 18 m. S. of Mainz by rail. Pop. (1900) 6893. There ALZEY, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Hesseare a Roman Catholic and two Protestant churches, several highgrade schools and a teachers' seminary. Alzey has industries of wine. It is immortalized in the Nibelungenlied in the person of dyeing and weaving, breweries, and does a considerable trade in "Volker von Alzeie," the warrior who in the last part of the epic "L was called plays a part second only to that of Hagen, and who the minstrel (spilman) because he could fiddle." It became an and in 1689 burnt by the French. Annexed to France during imperial city in 1277. In 1620 it was sacked by the Spaniards the Napoleonic wars, it passed in 1815 to the grand-duchy of

Hesse-Darmstadt.

ALZOG, JOHANN BAPTIST (1808-1878), German theologian, studied at Breslau and Bonn and was ordained priest at Cologne was born at Ohlau, in Silesia, on the 29th of June 1808. He in 1834. In the following year he accepted the chairs of exegesis and church history at the seminary of Posen. He removed in 1844 to Hildesheim, where he had been appointed rector of the seminary. He became professor of church history at the university of Freiburg in the Breisgau in 1853 and held that post till his death on the 1st of March 1878. Together with Döllinger, Alzog was instrumental in convoking the famous Munich assembly of Catholic scholars in 1863. He also took part, with Bishops Hefele and Haseberg, in the preparatory work of the Vatican Council and voted in favour of the doctrine

of papal infallibility but against the opportuneness of its promulgation. Alzog's fame rests mainly on his Handbuch der Universal-Kirchengeschichte (Mainz, 1841, often reprinted under various titles; Eng. trans. by Pabisch and Byrne, A Manual of Church History, 4 vols. Cincinnati, 1874). Based upon the foundations laid by Möhler, this manual was generally accepted as the best exposition of Catholic views, in opposition to the Protestant manual by C. A. Hase, and was translated into several languages. Besides a host of minor writings on ecclesiastical subjects, and an active collaboration in the great Kirchenlexicon of Wetzer and Welte, Alzog was also the author of Grundriss der Patrologie (Freiburg, 1866, 4th ed. 1888), a scholarly work, though now superseded by that of O. Bardenhewer. literarius recentioris theologiae catholicae, vol. iii. A full list of Alzog's writings is given in H. Hurter's Nomenclator For an account of his life see the funeral oration by F. X. Kraus, entitled: Gedächtnissrede auf Johannes Alzog (Freiburg, 1879). AMADÍS DE GAULA. This famous romance of chivalry survives only in a Castilian text, but it is claimed by Portugal as well as by Spain. The date of its composition, the name of its author, and the language in which it was originally written are not yet settled. It is not even certain when the romance was first printed, for though the oldest known edition (a unique copy of which is in the British Museum) appeared at Saragossa in 1508, it is highly probable that Amadis was in print before this date: an edition is reported to have been issued at Seville in 1496. As it exists in Spanish, Amadis de Gaula consists of four books, the last of which is generally believed to be by the regidor of Medina del Campo, Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo (whose name is given as Garci Ordoñez de Montalvo in all editions of Amadis later than that of 1508, and as Garci Gutiérrez de Montalvo in some editions of the Sergas de Esplandián). Montalvo alleges that the first three books were arranged and corrected by him from " the ancient originals," and a reference in the prologue to the siege of Granada points to the conclusion that the Spanish recast was made shortly after 1492; it is

possible, however, that the prologue alone was written after 1492, and that the text itself is older. The number of these "ancient originals " is not stated, nor is there any mention of the language in which they were composed; Montalvo's silence on the latter point might be taken to imply that they were in Castilian, but any such inference would be hazardous. Three books of Amadis de Gaula are mentioned by Pero Ferrús who was living in 1379, and there is evidence that the romance was current in Castile more than a quarter of a century earlier; but again there is no information as to the language in which they were written. Gomes Eannes de Azurara, in his Chronica de Conde D. Pedro de Menezes (c. 1450), states that Amadis de Gaula was written by Vasco de Lobeira in the time of king Ferdinand of Portugal who died in 1383: as Vasco de Lobeira was knighted in 1385, it would follow that he wrote the elaborate romance in his earliest youth. This conclusion is untenable, and the suggestion that the author was Pedro de Lobeira (who flourished in the 15th century) involves a glaring anachronism. A further step was taken by the historian João de Barros, who maintained in an unpublished work dating between 1540 and 1550 that Vasco de Lobeira wrote Amadis de Gaula in Portuguese, and that his text was translated into Castilian; this is unsupported assertion. Towards the end of the 16th century Miguel Leite Ferreira, son of the Portuguese poet, Antonio Ferreira, declared that the original manuscript of Amadis de Gaula was then in the Aveiro archives, and an Amadis de Gaula in Portuguese, which is alleged to have existed in the conde de Vimeiro's library as late as 1586, had vanished before 1726. In the absence of corroboration, these dubious details must be received with extreme reserve. A stronger argument in favour of the Portuguese case is drawn from the existing Spanish text. In book I, chapters 40 and 42, it is recorded that the Infante Alphonso of Portugal suggested a radical change in the narrative of Briolanja's relations with Amadís. This prince has been identified as the Infante Alphonso who died in 1312, or as Alphonso IV. who ascended the Portuguese throne in 1325. Were either of these identifications established, the date of composition might be referred with certainty to the beginning of the 14th century or the end of the 13th. But both identifications are conjectural. Nevertheless the passage in the Spanish text undeniably lends some support to the Portuguese claim, and recent critics have inclined to the belief that Amadis de Gaula was written by João de Lobeira, a Galician knight who frequented the Portuguese court between 1258 and 1285, and to whom are ascribed two fragments of a poem in the Colocci-Brancuti Canzoniere (Nos. 240 and 240b), which reappears with some unimportant variants in Amadis de Gaula (book II, chapter 11). The coincidence may be held to account in some measure for the traditional association of a Lobeira with the authorship of Amadis de Gaula; but, though curious, it warrants no definite conclusion being drawn from it. Against the Portuguese claim it is argued that the Villancico corresponding to João de Lobeiro's poem is an interpolation in the Spanish text, that Portuguese prose was in a rudimentary stage of development at the period when--ex hypothesi―the romance was composed, and that the book was very popular in Spain almost a century before it is even mentioned in Portugal. Lastly, there is the incontrovertible fact that Amidis de Gaula exists in Castilian, while it remains to be proved that it ever existed in Portuguese. As to its substance, it is beyond dispute that much of the text derives from the French romances of the Round Table; but the evidence does not enable us to say (1) whether it was pieced together from various French romances; (2) whether it was more or less literally translated from a lost French original; or (3) whether the first Peninsular adapter or translator was a Castilian or a Portuguese. On these points judgment must be suspended. There can, however, be no hesitation in accepting Cervantes' verdict on Amadís de Gaula as the "best of all the books of this kind that have ever been written." It is the prose epic of feudalism, and its romantic spirit, its high ideals, its fantastic gallantry, its ingenious adventures, its mechanism of symbolic wonders, and its flowing style have entranced readers of such various types as Francis I. and Charles V., Ariosto and Montaigne.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Gottfried Baist in the Grundriss der romanischen Philologie (Strassburg, 1897), ii. Band, 2. Abteilung, pp. 216-226 and 440-442; Ludwig Braunfels, Kritischer Versuch über den Roman Amadis von Gallien (Leipzig, 1876); Theophilo Braga, Historia das novelas portuguezas de cavalleria (Porto, 1873), Curso de litteratura e arte portugueza (Lisboa, 1881), and Questões de litteratura e arte portugueza (Lisboa, 1885); Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Origenes de la novela (Madrid, 1905); Eugène Baret, De l'Amadis de Gaule et de son influence sur les mœurs et la littérature au XVI et au XVII siècle (Paris, 1873). (J. F.-K.)

AMADOU, a soft tough substance used as tinder, derived from Polyporus fomentarius, a fungus belonging to the group Basidiomycetes and somewhat resembling a mushroom in manner of growth. It grows upon old trees, especially the oak, ash, fir and cherry. The fungus is cut into slices and then steeped in a solution of nitre. Amadou is prepared on the continent of Europe, chiefly in Germany, but the fungus is a native of Britain. Polyporus igniarius and other species are also used, but yield an | inferior product.

AMAKUSA, an island belonging to Japan, 26 m. long and 13 in extreme width, situated about 32° 20' N., and 130° E. long., on the west of the province of Higo (island of Kiushiu), from which it is separated by the Yatsushiro-kai. It has no high mountains, but its surface being very hilly-four of the peaks rise to a height over 1500 ft.-the natives resort to the terrace system of cultivation with remarkable success. A number of the heads of the Christians executed in connexion with the Shimabara rebellion in the first half of the 17th century were buried in this island. Amakusa produces a little coal and fine kaolin, which was largely used in former times by the potters of Hirado and Satsuma.

AMAL, the name of the noblest family among the Ostrogoths, and that from which nearly all their kings were chosen.

AMALARIC (d. 531), king of the Visigoths, son of Alaric II., was a child when his father fell in battle against Clovis, king of the Franks (507). He was carried for safety into Spain, which country and Provence were thenceforth ruled by his maternal grandfather, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, acting through his vicegerent, an Ostrogothic nobleman named Theudis. In 522 the young Amalaric was proclaimed king, and four years later, on Theodoric's death, he assumed full royal power in Spain and a part of Languedoc, relinquishing Provence to his cousin Athalaric. He married Clotilda, daughter of Clovis; but his disputes with her, he being an Arian and she a Catholic, brought on him the penalty of a Frankish invasion, in which he lost his life in 531. AMALASUNTHA or AMALASUENTHA, queen of the Ostrogoths (d. 535), daughter of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, was married in 515 to Eutharic, an Ostrogoth of the old Amal line, who had previously been living in Spain. Her husband died, apparently in the early years of her marriage, leaving her with On the death of her two children, Athalaric and Matasuentha. father in 526, she succeeded him, acting as regent for her son, but being herself deeply imbued with the old Roman culture, she gave to that son's education a more refined and literary turn than suited the ideas of her Gothic subjects. Conscious of her unpopularity she banished, and afterwards put to death, three Gothic nobles whom she suspected of intriguing against her rule, and at the same time opened negotiations with the emperor Justinian with the view of removing herself and the Gothic treasure to Constantinople. Her son's death in 534 made but little change in the posture of affairs. Amalasuntha, now queen, with a view of strengthening her position, made her cousin Theodahad partner of her throne (not, as sometimes stated, her husband, for his wife was still living). The choice was unfortunate. Theodahad, notwithstanding a varnish of literary culture, was a coward and a scoundrel. He fostered the disaffection of the Goths, and either by his orders or with his permission, Amalasuntha was imprisoned on an island in the Tuscan lake of Bolsena, where in the spring of 535 she was murdered in her bath.

The letters of Cassiodorus, chief minister and literary adviser of Amalasuntha, and the histories of Procopius and Jordanes, give us

our chief information as to the character of Amalasuntha.

1

he who set William of Tyre to work. He was perhaps still more of a lawyer: his delight was in knotty points of the law, and he knew the Assises better than any of his subjects. The Church had some doubts of him, and he laid his hands on the Church. William of Tyre was once astonished to find him questioning, on a bed of sickness, the resurrection of the body; and his taxa-| tion of clerical goods gave umbrage to the clergy generally. But he maintained the state of his kingdom with the resources which he owed to the Church; and he is the last in the fine list of the carly kings of Jerusalem.

William of Tyre is our original authority: see xix. 2-3 for his sketch of Amalric. Röhricht narrates the reign of Amalric I., Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem, c. xvii.-xviii.

Amalric II., king from 1197 to 1205, was the brother of Guy of Lusignan. He had been constable of Jerusalem, but in 1194, on the death of his brother, he became king of Cyprus, as Amalric I. He married Isabella, the daughter of Amalric I. by his second marriage, and became king of Jerusalem in right of his wife in 1197. In 1198 he was able to procure a five years' truce with the Mahommedans, owing to the struggle between Saladin's brothers and his sons for the inheritance of his territories. The truce was disturbed by raids on both sides, but in 1204 it was renewed for six years. Amalric died in 1205, just after his son and just before his wife. The kingdom of Cyprus passed to Hugh, his son by an earlier marriage, while that of Jerusalem passed to Maria, the daughter of Isabella by her previous marriage with Conrad of Montferrat. (E. BR.) AMALRIC (Fr. AMAURY) OF BENA (d. c. 1204-1207), French theologian, was born in the latter part of the 12th century at Bena, a village in the diocese of Chartres. He taught philosophy and theology at the university of Paris and enjoyed a great reputation as a subtle dialectician; his lectures developing the philosophy of Aristotle attracted a large circle of hearers. In 1204 his doctrines were condemned by the university, and, on a personal appeal to Pope Innocent III., the sentence was ratified, Amalric being ordered to return to Paris and recant his errors. His death was caused, it is said, by grief at the humiliation to which he had been subjected. In 1209 ten of his followers were burnt before the gates of Paris, and Amalric's own body was exhumed and burnt and the ashes given to the winds. The doctrines of his followers, known as the Amalricians, were formally condemned by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Amalric appears to have derived his philosophical system from Erigena (q.v.), whose principles he developed in a one-sided and strongly pantheistic form. Three propositions only can with certainty be attributed to him: (1) that God is all; (2) that every Christian is bound to believe that he is a member of the body of Christ, and that this belief is necessary for salvation: (3) that he who remains in love of God can commit no sin. These three propositions were further developed by his followers, who maintained that God revealed Himself in a threefold revelation, the first in Abraham, marking the epoch of the Father; the second in Christ, who began the epoch of the Son; and the third in Amalric and his disciples, who inaugurated the era of the Holy Ghost. Under the pretext that a true believer could commit no sin, the Amalricians indulged in every excess, and the sect does not appear to have long survived the death of its founder.

See W. Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1874, i. 167-173); Hauréau, Hist. de la phil. scol. (Paris, 1872); C. Schmidt, Hist. de l'Eglise d'Occident pendant le moyen âge (Paris, 1885); Hefele, Conciliengesch. (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1886).

AMALTEO, the name of an Italian family belonging to Oderzo, Treviso, several members of which were distinguished in literature. The best known are three brothers, Geronimo (1507-1574), Giambattista (1525-1573) and Cornelio (1530-1603), whose Latin poems were published in one collection under the title Trium Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina (Venice, 1627; Amst., 1689). The eldest brother, Geronimo, was a celebrated physician; the second, Giambattista, accompanied a Venetian embassy to England in 1554, and was secretary to Pius IV. at the council of Trent; the third, Cornelio, was a physician and secretary to the republic of Ragusa.

AMALTEO, POMPONIO (1505-1584), Italian painter of the Venetian school, was born at San Vito in Friuli. He was a pupil and son-in-law of Pordenone, whose style he closely imitated. His works consist chiefly of frescoes and altar-pieces and many of them (e.g. in the church of Santa Maria de' Battisti, at San Vito) have suffered greatly from the ravages of time.

AMALTHEIA, in Greek mythology, the foster-mother of Zeus. She is sometimes represented as the goat which suckled the infant-god in a cave in Crete, sometimes as a nymph of uncertain parentage (daughter of Oceanus, Haemonius, Olen, Melisseus), who brought him up on the milk of a goat. This goat having broken off one of its horns, Amaltheia filled it with flowers and fruits and presented it to Zeus, who placed it together with the goat amongst the stars. According to another story, Zeus himself broke off the horn and gave it to Amaltheia, promising that it would supply whatever she desired in abundance. Amaltheia gave it to Achelous (her reputed brother), who exchanged it for his own horn which had been broken off in his contest with Heracles for the possession of Deianeira. According to ancient mythology, the owners of the horn were many and various. Speaking generally, it was regarded as the symbol of inexhaustible riches and plenty, and became the attribute of various divinities (Hades, Gaea, Demeter, Cybele, Hermes), and of rivers (the Nile) as fertilizers of the land. The term " horn of Amaltheia "is applied to a fertile district, and an estate belonging to Titus Pomponius Atticus was called Amaltheum. Cretan coins represent the infant Zeus being suckled by the goat; other Greek coins exhibit him suspended from its teats or carried in the arms of a nymph (Ovid, Fasti, v. 115; Metam. ix. 87).

AMANA, a township in Iowa county, Iowa, U.S.A., 19 m. S.W. (by rail) of Cedar Rapids. Pop. (1900) 1748; (1910) 1729. It is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways. The township is the home of a German religious communistic society, the Amana Society, formerly the True Inspiration Society (so called from its belief in the present inspiration of the truly godly and perfectly pious), whose members live in various villages near the Iowa river. These villages are named Amana, West Amana, South Amana, East Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana and Homestead. The houses are of brick or unpainted wood. The society has in all 26,000 acres of land, of which about 10,000 acres are covered with forests. The principal occupation of the members is farming, although they also have woollen mills (their woollens being of superior quality), a cotton print factory, flour mills, saw mills and dye shops. Each family has its own dwelling-place and a small garden; each member of a family has an annual allowance of credit at the common store and a room in the dwelling-house; and each group of families has a large garden, a common kitchen and a common dining-hall where men and women eat at separate tables. Between the ages of five and fourteen education is compulsory for the entire year. In the schools nature study and manual training are prominent; German is used throughout and English is taught in upper classes only. No man is permitted to marry until twenty-four years of age, and no woman until twenty. The society's views and practices are nearly related to the teachings of Schwenkfeld and Boehme. Baptism is not practised; the Lord's Supper is celebrated only once in two years; foot-washing is held as a sacrament. At an annual spiritual examination of the members, there are mutual criticisms and public confessions of sin. The Inspirationists are opposed to war and to taking of oaths. The Society became attached to the Separatist leader, Eberhard Ludwig Gruber (d. 1728) in Wetterau in 1714; in 1842-1844 about 600 members, led by Christian Metz, the " divine instrument " of the Society, emigrated from Germany to the United States and settled in a colony called Ebenezer, in Erie county, near Buffalo, N.Y.; in 1855 the colony began to remove to its present home, which it named from the mountain mentioned in the Song of Solomon, iv. 8, the Hebrew word meaning "remain true (or, more probably, "fixed"), and in 1859 it was incorporated under the name of the Amana Society. Metz died in 1864 and was

succeeded by Barbara Landmann, since whose death in 1884 the community has lacked an inspired leader. Amana was the strongest in numbers of the few sectarian communities in America which outlived the 19th century. A few new members have joined the community from Switzerland and Germany in recent years. In 1905 the community won a suit brought against it for its dissolution on the ground that, having been incorporated solely as a benevolent and religious body, it was illegally carrying on a general business.

See W. R. Perkins and B. L. Wick, History of the Amana Society or Community of True Inspiration, Historical Monograph, No. 1, in State University of Iowa publications (Iowa City, 1891); R. T. Ely, Amana: A Study of Religious Communism," in Harper's Magazine for October 1902; and Bertha M. H. Shambaugh, Amana, the Community of True Inspiration (Iowa City, 1908).

AMANITA. The amanitas include some of the most showy representatives of the Agaricineae or mushroom order of fungi (q.v.). In the first stages of growth, they are completely enveloped by an outer covering called the veil. As the plant develops the veil is ruptured; the lower portion forms a sheath or volva round the base of the stem, while the upper portion persists as white patches or scales or warts on the surface of the cap. The stem usually bears an upper ring of tissue, the

B

A, the young plant.

B, the mature plant.

Amanita muscaria.

g, the gills.

a, the annulus, or remnant of velum partiale.

C, longitudinal section of mature plant. v, remains of volva or velum p, the pileus. universale. s, the stalk. remains of an inner veil, that stretched from the stem to the edge of the cap and broke away from the cap as the latter expanded. The presence of the volva, and the clear white gills and spores, distinguish this genus from all other agarics. They are beautiful objects in the autumn woods; Amanita muscaria, the fly fungus, formerly known as Agaricus muscarius, being especially remarkable by its bright red cap covered with white warts. Others are pure white or of varying shades of yellow or green. There are sixteen British species of Amanita; they grow on the ground in or near woods. Several of the species are very poisonous.

AMANUENSIS (a Latin word, derived from the phrase servus a manu, slave of the hand, a secretary), one who writes, from dictation or otherwise, on behalf of another.

AMAPALA, the only port on the Pacific coast of Honduras, on the northern shore of Tigre island, in the Bay of Fonseca (q.v.); in 13° 3' N., and 87° 9' W. Pop. (1905) about 4000. Amapala was founded in 1838, and its port was opened and declared free in 1868. The roadstead is perfectly sheltered and so deep that the largest vessels can lie within a few yards of the shore. It is the natural outlet for the commerce of some of the richest parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Salvador; and during the 19th century it exported large quantities of gold, silver and other ores, although its progress was retarded by the delay in constructing a transcontinental railway from Puerto Cortes. Its depots on the mainland, both about 30 m. distant,

are La Brea, for the line to Puerto Cortes, and San Lorenzo, for Tegucigalpa. Silver is still exported, in addition to hides, timber, coffee and indigo, and there are valuable fisheries. AMARANTH, or AMARANT (from the Gr. àμápavros, unwithering), a name chiefly used in poetry, and applied to certain plants which, from not soon fading, typified immortality. Thus Milton (Paradise Lost, iii. 353):

It

"Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In paradise, fast by the tree of life,
Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence

To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,

And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven Rolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream: With these that never fade the spirits elect should be noted that the proper spelling of the word is Bind their resplendent locks." amarant; the more common spelling seems to have come from a hazy notion that the final syllable is the Greek word avlos, "flower," which enters into a vast number of botanical names.

The plant genus Amarantus (natural order Amarantaceae) contains several well-known garden plants, such as love-liesannual, with dark purplish flowers crowded in handsome droopbleeding (A. caudatus), a native of India, a vigorous hardy ing spikes. Another species A. hypochondriacus, is prince's feather, another Indian annual, with deeply-veined lanceshaped leaves, purple on the under face, and deep crimson flowers densely packed on erect spikes. "Globe amaranth" belongs to an allied genus, Gomphrena, and is also a native of India. It is an annual about 18 in. high, with solitary round heads of flowers; the heads are violet from the colour of the bracts which surround the small flowers.

In ancient Greece the amaranth (also called xpvoáveμov and Nixpuros) was sacred to Ephesian Artemis. It was supposed to have special healing properties, and as a symbol of immortality was used to decorate images of the gods and tombs. In legend, Amarynthus (a form of Amarantus) was a hunter of Artemis and king of Euboea; in a village of Amarynthus, of which he was the eponymous hero, there was a famous temple of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia (Strabo x, 448; Pausan. i. 31, p. 5).

See Lenz, Botanik der alt. Griech. und Röm. (1859); J. Murr, Die Pflanzenwelt in der griech. Mythol. (1890).

AMARAPURA ("the city of the gods "), formerly the capital of the Burmese kingdom, now a suburb of Mandalay, Burma, with a population in 1901 of 9103. The town was founded in 1783 to form a new capital about 6 m. to the north-east of Ava. It increased rapidly in size and population, and in 1810 was estimated to contain 170,000 inhabitants; but in that year the town was destroyed by fire, and this disaster, together with the removal of the native court to Ava in 1823, caused a decline in the prosperity of the place. In 1827 its population was estimated at only 30,000. It suffered severe calamity from an earthquake, which in 1839 destroyed the greater part of the city. It was finally abandoned in 1860, when king Mindon occupied Mandalay, 5 or 6 m. farther north. Amarapura was laid out on much the same plan as Ava. The ruins of the city wall, now overgrown with jungle, show it to have been a square with a side of about three-quarters of a mile in length. At each corner stood a solid brick pagoda about 100 ft. high. The most remarkable edifice was a celebrated temple, adorned with 250 lofty pillars of gilt wood, and containing a colossal bronze statue of Buddha. The remains of the former palace of the Burmese monarchs still survive in the centre of the town. During the time of its prosperity Amarapura was defended by a rampart and a large square citadel, with a broad moat, the walls being 7000 ft. long and 20 ft. high, with a bastion at each corner. The Burmans know it now as Myohaung, "the old city." It has a station on the Rangoon-Mandalay railway, and is the junction for the line to Maymyo and the Kunlong ferry and for the Sagaing-Myitkyina railway. The group of villages called Amarapura by Europeans is known to the Burmans as Taung-myo, "the southern city," as distinguished from Mandalay, the Myauk-myo, or "northern city," 3 m. distant.