Chapter LXXIX: Act 1903: , the powers and duties of the Board of Trade under the (4)

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.

Air was called Asben by the native tribes until they were conquered by the Berbers. The present inhabitants are for the most part of a mixed race, combining the finer traits of the berbers with negro characteristics. The sultan of Air is to a great extent dependent on the chiefs of the Tuareg tribes inhabiting a vast tract of the Sahara to the north-west. A large part of his revenue is derived from tribute exacted from the salt caravans. Since 1890 Air has been included in the French sphere of influence in West Africa.

Agades, the capital of the country, which has a circuit of 3 1/2 m., is built on the edge of a plateau 2500 ft. high, and is supposed to have been founded by the Berbers to serve as a secure magazine for their extensive trade with the Songhoi empire. The language of the people is a dialect of Songhoi. In former times Agades was a place of great traffic, and had a population of about 50,000. Since the beginning of the 16th century the prosperity of the town has, however, gradually declined. F. Foureau, who visited Agades in 1899, stated that more than half the total area was deserted and ruinous. The houses, which are built of clay, are low and flat-roofed; and the only buildings of importance are the chief mosque, which is surmounted by a tower 95 ft. high, and the sultan's residence, a massive two-storied structure pierced with small windows. The chief trade is grain. The great salt caravans pass through it, as well as pilgrims on their way to Mecca.

AIR (from an Indo-European root meaning ``breathe,'' ``blow''), the atmosphere that surrounds the earth; aer, the lower thick air, being distinguished from aither, With the development of analytical and especially of pneumatic chemistry, the air was recognized not to be one homogeneous substance, as was long supposed, and different ``airs,'' or gases, came to be distinguished. Thus oxygen gas, at the end of the 18th century, was known as dephlogisticated air, nitrogen or azote as phlogisticated air, hydrogen as inflammable air, carbonic acid gas as fixed air. The name is now ordinarily restricted to what is more accurately called atmospheric air--the air we breathe--the invisible elastic fluid which surrounds the earth (see ATMOSPHERE.) Probably the sense of atmosphere or environment led (though this is disputed by etymologists) to the further use of the word ``air'' to mean ``manner'' or ``appearance''; and so to its employment (cf. Lat. modus) in music for ``melody.'' (See ARIA.)

AIRAY, HENRY (1560?-1616), English Puritan divine, was born at Kentmere, Westmorland, but no record remains of the date of either birth or baptism. He was the son of William Airay, the favourite servant of Bernard Gilpin, ``the apostle of the North,'' whose bounty showed itself in sending Henry and his brother Evan (or Ewan) to his own endowed school, where they were educated ``in grammatical learning,'' and were in attendance at Oxford when Gilpin died. From Wood's Athenae we glean the details of Airay's college attendance. ``He was sent to St Edmund's hall in 1579, aged nineteen or thereabouts. Soon after he was translated to Queen's College, where he became pauper puer serviens; that is, a poor serving child that waits on the fellows in the common hall at meals, and in their chambers, and does other servile work about the college.'' His transference to Queen's is perhaps explained by its having been Gilpin's college, and by his Westmorland origin giving him a claim on Eaglesfield's foundation. He graduated B.A. on the 19th of June 1583, M.A. on the 15th of June 1586, B.D. in 1504 and D.D. on the 17th of June 1600--all in Queen's College. ``About the time he was master'' (1586) ``he entered holy orders, and became a frequent and zealous preacher in the university.'' His Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1618, reprinted 1864) is a specimen of his preaching before his college, and of his fiery denunciation of popery and his fearless enunciation of that Calvinism which Oxford in common with all England then prized. In 1598 he was chosen provost of his college, and in 1606 was vice-chancellor of the university. In the discharge of his vice-chancellor's duties he came into conflict with Laud, who even thus early was manifesting his antagonism to the prevailing Puritanism.

He was also rector of Otmore (or Otmoor), near Oxford, a living which involved him in a trying but successful litigation, whereof later incumbents reaped the benefit. He died on the 6th of October 1610. His character as a man, preacher, divine, and as an important ruler in the university, will be found portrayed in the Epistle by John Potter, prefixed to the Commentary. He must have been a fine specimen of the more cultured Puritans --possessed of a robust common-sense in admirable contrast with some of his contemporaries.

AIRD, THOMAS (1802-1876), Scottish poet, was born at Bowden, Roxburghshire, on the 28th of August 1802. He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he made the acquaintance of Carlyle and James Hogg, and he decided to devote himself to literary work. He published Martzoufie, a Tragedy, with other Poems (1826), a volume of essays, and a long narrative poem in several cantos, The Captive of Fez (1830). For a year he edited the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, and for twenty-eight years the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald. In 1848 he published a collected edition of his poems, which met with much favour. Carlyle said that he found in them ``a healthy breath as of mountain breezes.'' Among Aird's other friends were De Quincey, Lockhart, Stanley (afterwards dean of Westminster) and Motherwell. He died at Dumfries on the 25th of April 1876.

AIRDRIE, a municipal and police burgh of Lanarkshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 22,228. It is situated 11 m. E. of Glasgow by the North British railway, and also communicates with Glasgow by the Monkland Canal (which passes within 1 m. of the town), as well as by the Caledonian railway via Coatbridge and Whiffiet. The canal was constructed between 1761 and 1790, and connects with the Forth and Clyde Canal near Maryhill. Airdrie was a market town in 1695, but owes its prosperity to the great coal and iron beds in its vicinity. Other industries include iron and brass foundries, engineering, manufactures of woollens and calicoes, silk-weaving, paper-making, oil and fireclay. The public buildings comprise the town hall, county buildings, mechanics' institute, academy, two fever hospitals and free library, the burgh having been the first town in Scotland to adopt the Free Library Act. Airdrie unites with Falkirk. Hamilton, Lanark and Linlithgow in sending one member to parliament. The parish of New Monkland, in which Airdrie lies, was formed (with Old Monkland)in 1640 out of the ancient barony of Monkland, so named from the fact that it was part of the lands granted by Malcolm IV. to the monks of Newbattle.

AIRE, a town of south-western France, in the department of Landes, on the left bank of the Adour, 22 m. S.E. of Mont-de-Marsan on the Southern railway between Morcenx and Tarbes. Pop. (1906) 2283. It is the seat of a bishopric, and has a cathedral of the 12th century and an episcopal palace of the 11th, 17th and 18th centuries. Both have undergone frequent restoration. They are surpassed in interest by the church of St Quitterie in Mas d'Aire, the suburb south-west of the town. The latter is a brick building of the 13th and 14th centuries, with a choir in the Romanesque style, and a fine western portal which has been much disfigured. The crypt contains several Gallo-Roman tombs and the sarcophagus (5th century) of St Quitterie. Aire has two ecclesiastical seminaries.

Aire (Atura, Vicus Julii) was the residence of the kings of the Visigoths, One of whom, Alaric II. (q.v.), there drew up his famous code. The bishopric dates from the 5th century.

AIRE, a town of northern France, on the river Lys, in the department of Pas-de-Calais, 12 m. S.S.E. of St Omer by rail. Pop. (1906) 4258. The town lies in a low and marshy situation at the junction of three canals. The chief buildings are the church of St Pierre (15th and 16th centuries), which has an imposing tower and rich interior decoration; a hotel de ville of the 18th century; and the Bailliage (16th century), a small building in the Renaissance style. Aire has flour-mills, leather and oil works, and nail manufactories, and trade in agricultural produce.

In the middle ages Aire belonged to the counts of Flanders, from whom in 1188 it received a charter, which is still extant. It was given to France by the peace of Utrecht 1713.

AIR-ENGINE, the name given to heat-engines which use air for their working substance, that is to say for the substance which is caused alternately to expand and contract by application and removal of heat, this process enabling a portion of the applied heat to be transformed into mechanical work. Just as the working substance which alternately takes in and gives out heat in the steam-engine is water (converted during a part of the action into steam), so in the air-engine it is air. The practical drawbacks to employing air as the working substance of a heat-engine are so great that its use has been very limited. Such attempts as have been made to design air-engines on a large scale have been practical failures, and are now interesting only as.steps in the historical development of applied thermodynamics. In the form of motors for producing very small amounts of power air-engines have been found convenient, and within a restricted field they are still met with. But even in this field the competition of the oil-engine and the gas-engine is too formidable to leave to the air-engine more than a very narrow chance of employment.

One of the chief practical objections to air-engines is the great bulk of the working substance in relation to the amount of heat that is utilized in the working of the engine. To some extent this objection may be reduced by using the air in a state of compression, and therefore of greater density, throughout its operation. Even then, however, the amount of operative heat is very small in comparison with that which passes through the steam-engine, per cubic foot swept through by the piston, for the change of state which water undergoes in its transformation into steam involves the taking in of much more heat than can be communicated to air in changing its temperature within such a range as is practicable. Another and not less serious objection is the practical difficulty of getting heat into the working air through the walls of the containing vessel. The air receives heat from an external furnace just as water does in the boiler of a steam-engine, by contact with a heated metallic surface, but it takes up heat from such a surface with much less readiness than does water. The waste of heat in the chimney gases is accordingly greater; and further, the metallic shell is liable to be quickly burned away as a result of its contact at a high temperature with free oxygen. The temperature of the shell is much higher than that of a steam boiler, for in order to secure that the working air will take up a fair amount of heat, the upper limit to which its temperature is raised greatly exceeds that of even high-pressure steam. This objection to the air-engine arises from the fact that the heat comes to it from external combustion; it disappears when internal combustion is resorted to; that is to say, when the heat is generated within the envelope containing the working air, by the combustion there of gaseous or other fuel. Gas-engines and oil-engines and other types of engine employing internal combustion may be regarded as closely related to the air-engine. They differ from it, however, in the fact that their working substance is not air, but a mixture of gases--a necessary consequence of internal combustion. It is to internal combustion that they owe their success, for it enables them to get all the heat of combustion into the working substance, to use a relatively very high temperature at the top of the range, and at the same time to escape entirely the drawbacks that arise in the air-engine proper through the need of conveying heat to the air through a metallic shell.

A form of air-engine which was invented in 1816 by the Rev. R. Stirling is of special interest as embodying the earliest application of what is known as the ``regenerative'' principle, the principle namely that heat may be deposited by a substance at one stage of its action and taken up again at another stage with but little loss, and with a great resulting change in the substance's temperature at each of the two stages in the operation. The principle has since found wide application in metallurgical and other operations. In any heat-engine it is essential that the working substance should be at a high temperature while it is taking in heat, and at a relatively low temperature when it is rejecting heat. The highest thermodynamic efficiency will be reached when the working substance is at the top of its temperature range while any heat is being received and at the bottom while any heat is being rejected--as is the case in the cycle of operations of the theoretically imagined engine of Carnot.

(See THERMODYNAMICS and STEAM-ENGINE.) In Carnot's cycle the substance takes in heat at its highest temperature, then passes by adiabatic expansion from the top to the bottom of its temperature range, then rejects heat at the bottom of the range, and is finally brought back by adiabatic compression to the highest temperature at which it again takes in heat, and so on. An air-engine working on this cycle would be intolerably bulky and mechanically inefficient. Stirling substituted for the two stages of adiabatic expansion and compression the passage of the air to and fro through a ``regenerator,'' in which the air was alternately cooled by storing its heat in the material of the regenerator and reheated by picking the stored heat up again on the return journey. The essential parts of one form of Stirling's engine are shown in fig. 1. There A is the externally fired heating vessel, the lower part of which contains hot air which is taking in heat from the furnace beneath. A pipe from the top of A leads to the working cylinder (B). At the top of A is a cooler (C) consisting of pipes through which cold water is made to circulate. In A there is a displacer (D) which is connected (by parts not shown) with the piston in such a manner that it moves down when the piston has moved up. The air-pressure is practically the same above and below D, for these spaces are in free communication with one another through the regenerator (E), which is an annular space stacked loosely with wire-gauze. When D moves down, the hot air is driven up through the regenerator to the upper part of the containing vessel. It deposits its heat in the wire-gauze, becoming lowered in temperature and consequently reduced in pressure. The piston (B) descends, and the air, now in contact with the cooling pipes (C), gives up heat to them. Then the displacer (D) is raised. The air passes down through its regenerator, picking up the heat deposited there, and thereby having its temperature restored and its pressure raised. It then takes in heat from the furnace, expanding in volume and forcing the piston (B) to rise, which completes the cycle. The engine was double-acting, another heating vessel like A being connected with the upper end of the working cylinder at F. The stages at which heat is taken from the furnace and rejected to the cooler (C) are approximately isothermal at the upper and lower limits of temperature respectively, and the cycle accordingly is approximately ``perfect'' in the thermodynamic sense. The theoretical indicator diagram is made up of two isothermal lines for the taking in and rejection of heat, and two lines of constant volume for the two passages through the regenerator. This engine was the subject of two patents (by R. and S. Stirling) in 1827 and 1840. A double-acting Stirling engine of 50 horse-power, using air which was maintained by a pump at a fairly high pressure throughout the operations, was used for some years in the Dundee Foundry, where it is oredited with having consumed only 1.7 lb. of coal per hour per indicated horse-power. The coal consumption per brake-horse-power was no doubt much greater. It was finally abandoned on account of the failure of the heating vessels.

The type survives in some small domestic motors, an example of which, manufactured under the patent of H. Robinson, is shown in fig. 2. In this there is no compressing pump, and the main pressure of the working air is simply that of the atmosphere. The whole range of pressure is so slight that no packing is required. Here A is the vessel in which the air is heated and within which the displacer works. It is heated by a small cokefire or by a gas flame in C. It communicates through a passage (D) with the working cylinder (B) . The displacer (E) which takes its motion through a rod (I) from a rocking lever (F) connected by a short link to the crank-pin, is itself the regenerator, its construction being such that the air passes up and down through it as in one of the original Stirling forms. The cooler is a water vessel (G) through which water circulates from a tank (H). Ylessrs. Hayward and Tyler's ``Rider'' engine may be mentioned as another small hot-air motor which follows nearly the Stirling cycle of operations.

An attempt to develop a powerful air-engine was made in America about 1833 by John Ericsson, who applied it to marine propulsion in the ship ``Caloric,'' but without permanent success. Like Stirling, Ericsson used a regenerator, but with this difference that the pressure instead of the volume of the air remained constant while it passed in each direction through the regenerator. Cold air was compressed by a. pump into a receiver, where it was kept cool during compression and from which it passed through a regenerator into the working cylinder. In so passing it took up heat and expanded. It was then allowed to expand further, taking in heat from a furnace under the cylinder and falling in pressure. This expansion was continued till the pressure of the working air fell nearly to that of the atmosphere. It was then discharged through the regenerator, depositing heat for the next charge of air in turn to take up. The indicator diagram approximated to a form made up of two isothermal lines and two lines of constant pressure.

In the transmission of power by compressed air (see POWER TRANSMISSION) the air-driven motors are for the most part machines resembling steam-engines in the general features of their pistons, cylinders, valves and so forth. Such machines are not properly described as air-engines since their function is not the conversion of heat into work. Incidentally, however, they do in some cases partially discharge that function, namely, when what is called a ``preheater'' is used to warm up the compressed air before it enters in the motor cylinder. The object of this device is not, primarily, to produce work from heat, but to escape the inconveniences that would otherwise arise through extreme cooling of the air during its expansion. Without preheating the expanding air becomes so cold as to be liable to deposit snow from the moisture held in suspension, and thereby to clog the valves. With preheating this is avoided, and the amount of work done by a given quantity of air is increased by the conversion into work of a part of the supplementary energy which the preheater supplies in the form of heat. (J. A. E.)

AIREY, RICHARD AIREY, BARON (1803-1881), British general, was the son of Lieutenant-General Sir George Airey (1761-1833) and was born in 1803. He entered the army in 1821, became captain in 1825, and served on the staff of Sir Frederick Adam in the Ionian Islands (1827-1830) and on that of Lord Aylmer in North America (1830-1832). In 1838 Airey, then a lieutenant-colonel, went to the Horse Guards, where in 1852 he became military secretary to the commander-in-chief, Lord Hardinge. In 1854 he was given a brigade command in the army sent out to the East; from which, however, he was immediately transferred to the onerous and difficult post of quartermaster-general to Lord Raglan, in which capacity he served through the campaign in the Crimea. He was made a major-general in December 1854, and it was universally recognized in the army that he was the best soldier on Lord Raglan's staff. He was made a K.C.B., and was reported upon most favourably by his superiors, Lord Raglan and Sir J. Simpson. Airey was a quartermaster-general in the older sense of the word, i.e. a chief of the general staff, but a different view of the duties of the office was then becoming recognized. Public opinion held him and his department responsible for the failures and mismanagement of the commissariat. Airey demanded an inquiry on his return to England and cleared himself completely, but he never recovered from the effects of the unjust persecution of which he had been made the victim, though the popular view was not shared by his military superiors. He gave up his post at the front to become quartermaster-general to the forces at home. In 1862 he was promoted lieutenant-general, and from 1865 to 1870 he was governor of Gibraltar, receiving the G.C.B. in 1867. In 1870 he became adjutant-general at headquarters, and in 1871 attained the full rank of general. In 1876, on his retirement, he was created a peer, and in 1879-1880 he presided over the celebrated Airey commission on army reform. He died at the house of Lord Wolseley, at Leatherhead, on the 14th of September 1881.

AIR-GUN, a gun in which the force employed to propel the bullet is the elasticity of compressed atmospheric air. It has attached to it, or constructed in it, a reservoir of compressed air, a portion of which, liberated into the space behind the bullet when the trigger is pulled, propels the bullet from the barrel by its expansion. The common forms of air-gun, which are merely toys, are charged by compressing a spiral spring, one end of which forms a piston working in a cylinder; when released by a pull on the trigger, this spring expands, and the air forced out in front of it propels the bullet. Air-guns of this kind are sometimes made to resemble walking-sticks and are then known as air-canes.

AIRY, SIR GEORGE BIDDELL (1801-1892), British Astronomer Royal, was born at Alnwick on the 27th of July 1801. He came of a long line of Airys who traced their descent back to a family of the same name residing at Eentmere, in Westmorland, in the 14th century; but the branch to which he belonged, having suffered in the Civil wars, removed to Lincolnshire, where for several generations they lived as farmers. George Airy was educated first at elementary schools in Hereford, and afterwards at Colchester Grammar School. In 1819 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar. Here he had a brilliant career, and seems to have been almost immediately recognized as the leading man of his year. In 1822 he was elected scholar of Trinity, and in the following year he graduated as senior wrangler and obtained first Smith's prize. On the 1st of October 1824 he was elected fellow of Trinity, and in December 1826 was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics in succession to Thomas Turton. This chair he held for little more than a year, being elected in February 1828 Plumian professor of astronomy and director of the new Cambridge observatory. Some idea of his activity as a writer on mathematical and physical subjects during these early years may be gathered from the fact that previous to this appointment he had contributed no less than three important memoirs to the Philisophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and eight to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. At the Cambridge observatory Airy soon gave evidence of his remarkable power of organization. The only telescope erected in the establishment when he took it in charge was the transit instrument, and to this he vigorously devoted himself. By the adoption of a regular system of work, and a careful plan of reduction, he was able to keep his observations reduced practically up to date, and published them annually with a degree of punctuality which astonished his contemporaries. Before long a mural circle was installed, and regular observations were instituted with it in 1833. In the same year the duke of Northumberland presented the Cambridge observatory with a fine object-glass of 12 in. aperture, which was mounted according to Airy's designs and under his superintendence, although the erection was not completed until after his removal to Greenwich in 1835. Airy's writings during this time are divided between mathematical physics and astronomy. The former are for the most part concerned with questions relating to the theory of light, arising out of his professorial lectures, among which may be specially mentioned his paper ``On the Diffraction of an Object-Glass with Circular Aperture.'' In 1831 the Copley medal of the Royal Society was awarded to him for these researches. Of his astronomical writings during this period the most important are his investigation of the mass of Jupiter, his report to the British Association on the progress of astronomy during the 19th century, and his memoir On an Inequality of Long Period in the Motions of the Earth and Venus.

One of the sections of his able and instructive report was devoted to ``A Comparison of the Progress of Astronomy in England with that in other Countries,'' very much to the disadvantage of England. This reproach was subsequently to a great extent removed by his own labours.

Airy's discovery of a new inequality in the motions of Venus and the earth is in some respects his most remarkable achievement. In correcting the elements of Delambre's solar tables he had been led to suspect an inequality overlooked by their constructor. The cause of this he did not long seek in vain. Eight times the mean motion of Venus is so nearly equal to thirteen times that of the earth that the difference amounts to only the 1/240th of the earth's mean motion, and from the fact that the term depending on this difference, although very small in itself, receives in the integration of the differential equations a multiplier of about 2,200,000, Airy was led to infer the existence of a sensible inequality extending over 240 years (Phil. Trans. cxxii. 67). The investigation that brought about this result was probably the most laborious that had been made up to Airy's time in planetary theory, and represented the first specific improvement in the solar tables effected in England since the establishment of the theory of gravitation. In recognition of this work the medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was awarded to him in 1833.

In June 1835 Airy was appointed Astronomer Royal in succession to John Pond, and thus commenced that long career of wisely directed and vigorously sustained industry at the national observatory which, even more perhaps than his investigations in abstract science or theoretical astronomy, constitutes his chief title to fame. The condition of the observatory at the time of his appointment was such that Lord Auckland, the first lord of the Admiralty, considered that ``it ought to be cleared out,'' while Airy admitted that ``it was in a queer state.'' With his usual energy he set to work at once to reorganize the whole management. He remodelled the volumes of observations, put the library on a proper footing, mounted the new (Sheepshanks) equatorial and organized a new magnetic observatory. In 1847 an altazimuth was erected, designed by Airy to enable observations of the moon to be made not only on the meridian, but whenever she might be visible. In 1848 Airy invented the reflex zenith tube to replace the zenith sector previously employed. At the end of 1850 the great transit circle of 8 in. aperture and 11 ft. 6 in. focal length was erected, and is still the principal instrument of its class at the observatory. The mounting in 1859 of an equatorial of 13 in. aperture evoked the comment in his journal for that year, ``There is not now a single person employed or instrument used in the observatory which was there in Mr Pond's time''; and the transformation was completed by the inauguration of spectroscopic work in 1868 and of the photographic registration of sun-spots in 1873.

The formidable undertaking of reducing the accumulated planetary observations made at Greenwich from 1750 to 1830 was already in progress under Airy's supervision when he became Astronomer Royal. Shortly afterwards he undertook the further laborious task of reducing the enormous mass of observations of the moon made at Greenwich during the same period under the direction, successively, of J. Bradley, N. Bliss, N. Maskelyne and John Pond, to defray the expense of which a large sum of money was allotted by the Treasury. As the result, no less than 8000 lunar observations were rescued from oblivion, and were, in 1846, placed at the disposal of astronomers in such a form that they could be used directly for comparison with the theory and for the improvement of the tables of the moon's motion. For this work Airy received in 1848 a testimonial from the Royal Astronomical Society, and it at once led to the discovery by P. A. Hansen of two new inequalities in the moon's motion. After completing these reductions, Airy made inquiries, before engaging in any theoretical investigation in connexion with them, whether any other mathematician was pursuing the subject, and learning that Hansen had taken it in hand under the patronage of the king of Denmark, but that, owing to the death of the king and the consequent lack of funds, there was danger of his being compelled to abandon it, he applied to the admiralty on Hansen's behalf for the necessary sum. His request was immediately granted, and thus it came about that Hansen's famous Tables de la Lune were dedicated to La Haute Amiraute de sa Majeste la Reine de la Grande Bretagne et d'Irlande. One of the most remarkable of Airy's researches was his determination of the mean density of the earth. In 1826 the idea occurred to him of attacking this problem by means of pendulum experiments at the top and bottom of a deep mine. His first attempt, made in the same year at the Dolcoath mine in Cornwall, failed in consequence of an accident to one of the pendulums; a second attempt in 1828 was defeated by a flooding of the mine, and many years elapsed before another opportunity presented itself. The experiments eventually took place at the Harton pit near South Shields in 1854. Their immediate result was to show that gravity at the bottom of the mine exceeded that at the top by 1/19286th of its amount, the depth being 1256 ft. From this he was led to the final value of 6.566 for the mean density of the earth as compared with that of water (Phil. Trans. cxlvi. 342). This value, although considerably in excess of that previously found by different methods, was held by Airy, from the care and completeness with which the observations were carried out and discussed, to be ``entitled to compete with the others on, at least, equal terms.''