OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amaranth

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​AMARANTH, or Amarant (from the Gr. άμάραντος, 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):—
“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 Bind their resplendent locks.”
It should be noted that the proper spelling of the word is amarant; the more common spelling seems to have come from a hazy notion that the final syllable is the Greek word άνθος, “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-lies-bleeding (A. caudatus), a native of India, a vigorous hardy annual, with dark purplish flowers crowded in handsome drooping spikes. Another species A. hypochondriacus, is prince’s feather, another Indian annual, with deeply-veined lance-shaped 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 χρυσάνθεμον and ἑλιχρυσος) 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).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amaltheia

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​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).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amapala

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​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.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amara Sinha

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​AMARA SINHA (c. A.D. 375), Sanskrit grammarian and poet, of whose personal history hardly anything is known. He is said to have been “one of the nine gems that adorned the throne of Vikramaditya,” and according to the evidence of Hsüan Tsang, this is the Chandragupta Vikramaditya that flourished about A.D. 375. Amara seems to have been a Buddhist; and an early tradition asserts that his works, with one exception, were destroyed during the persecution carried on by the orthodox Brahmins in the 5th century. The exception is the celebrated Amara-Kosha (Treasury of Amara), a vocabulary of Sanskrit roots, in three books, and hence sometimes called Trikanda or the “Tripartite.” It contains 10,000 words, and is arranged, like other works of its class, in metre, to aid the memory. The first chapter of the Kosha was printed at Rome in Tamil character in 1798. An edition of the entire work, with English notes and an index by H. T. Colebrooke, appeared at Serampore in 1808. The Sanskrit text was printed at Calcutta in 1831. A French translation by A. L. A. Loiseleur-Deslongchamps as published at Paris in 1839.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amalteo

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​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.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amalteo, Pomponio

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​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.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amarapura

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​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.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Automorphism

See also Automorphism on Wikipedia; automorphism on Wiktionary; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer. In modern usage, automorphism is a mathematical term.
​AUTOMORPHISM (from Gr. αὐτός, self, and μορφή, form), the conception and interpretation of other people’s habits and ideas on the analogy of one’s own.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Autonomy

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​AUTONOMY (Gr. αὐτός, self, and νόμος, law), in general, freedom from external restraint, self-government. The term is usually coupled with a qualifying adjective. Thus, political autonomy is self-government in its widest sense, independence of all control from without. Local autonomy is a freedom of self-government within a sphere marked out by some superior authority; e.g. municipal corporations in England have their administrative powers marked out for them by acts of parliament, and in so far as they govern themselves within these limits exercise local autonomy. Administrative or constitutional autonomy, such as exists in the British colonies, implies an extent of self-government which falls short only of complete independence. The term is used loosely even in the case of e.g. religious bodies, individual churches and other communities ​which enjoy a measure of self-government in certain specified respects.
In philosophy, the term (with its antithesis “heteronomy”) was applied by Kant to that aspect of the rational will in which, qua rational, it is a law to itself, independently alike of any external authority, of the results of experience and of the impulses of pleasure and pain. In the sphere of morals, the ultimate and only authority which the mind can recognize is the law which emerges from the pure moral consciousness. This is the only sense in which moral freedom can be understood. (See Ethics; Kant.) Though the term “autonomy” in its fullest sense implies entire freedom from causal necessity, it can also be used even in determinist theories for relative independence of particular conditions, theological or conventional.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Autogamy

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​AUTOGAMY (from Gr. αὐτός, self, and γαμία, marriage), a botanical term for self-fertilization. (See Angiosperms.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Autolycus of Pitane

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​AUTOLYCUS OF PITANE, Greek mathematician and astronomer, probably flourished in the second half of the 4th century B.C., since he is said to have instructed Arcesilaus. His extant works consist of two treatises; the one, Περὶ κινουμένης σφαίρας, contains some simple propositions on the motion of the sphere, the other, Περὶ ἐπιτολῶν καὶ δύσεων, in two books, discusses the rising and setting of the fixed stars. The former treatise is historically interesting for the light it throws on the development which the geometry of the sphere had already reached even before Autolycus and Euclid (see Theodosius of Tripolis).
There are several Latin versions of Autolycus, a French translation by Forcadel (1572), and an admirable edition of the Greek text with Latin translation by F. Hultsch (Leipzig, 1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Automaton

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​AUTOMATON (from αὐτός, self, and μάω, to seize), a self-moving machine, or one in which the principle of motion is contained within the mechanism itself. According to this description, clocks, watches and all machines of a similar kind, are automata, but the word is generally applied to contrivances which simulate for a time the motions of animal life. If the human figure and actions be represented, the automaton has sometimes been called specially an androides. We have very early notices of the construction of automata, e.g. the tripods of Vulcan, and the moving figures of Daedalus. In 400 B.C., Archytas of Tarentum is said to have made a wooden pigeon that could fly, and during the middle ages numerous instances of the construction of automata are recorded. Regiomontanus is said to have made of iron a fly, which would flutter round the room and return to his hand, and also an eagle, which flew before the emperor Maximilian when he was entering Nuremberg. Roger Bacon is said to have forged a brazen head which spoke, and Albertus Magnus to have had an androides, which acted as doorkeeper, and was broken to pieces by Aquinas. Of these, as of some later instances, e.g. the figure constructed by Descartes and the automata exhibited by Dr Camus, not much is accurately known. But in the 18th century, Jacques de Vaucanson, the celebrated mechanician, exhibited three admirable figures,—the flute-player, the tambourine-player, and the duck, which was capable of eating, drinking, and imitating exactly the natural voice of that fowl. The means by which these results had been produced were clearly seen, and a great impulse was given to the construction of similar figures. Knauss exhibited at Vienna an automaton which wrote; a father and son named Droz constructed several ingenious mechanical figures which wrote and played music; Frederick Kaufmann and Leonard Maelzel made automatic trumpeters who could play several marches. The Swiss have always been celebrated for their mechanical ingenuity, and they construct most of the curious toys, such as flying and singing birds, which are frequently met with in industrial exhibitions. The greatest difficulty has generally been experienced in devising any mechanism which shall successfully simulate the human voice (not to be compared with the gramophone, which reproduces mechanically a real voice). No attempt has been thoroughly successful, though many have been made. A figure exhibited by Fabermann of Vienna remains the best. Kempelen’s famous chess-player for many years astonished and puzzled Europe. This figure, however, was no true automaton, although the mechanical contrivances for concealing the real performer and giving effect to his desired movements were exceedingly ingenious. J. N. Maskelyne, in more recent times (1875–1880), has been prominent in exhibiting his automata, Psycho (who played cards) and Zoe (who drew pictures), at the Egyptian Hall, London, but the secret of these contrivances was well kept. (See Conjuring.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Autogeny

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​AUTOGENY, AUTOGENOUS (Gr. αὐτογενής), spontaneous generation, self-produced. Haeckel distinguished autogeny and plasmogeny, applying the former term when the formative fluid in which the first living matter was supposed to arise was inorganic and the latter when it was organic, i.e. contained the requisite fundamental substances dissolved in the form of complicated and fluid combinations of carbon. In “autogenous soldering” two pieces of metal are united by the melting of the opposing surfaces, without the use of a separate fusible alloy or solder as a cementing material.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Autolycus

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​AUTOLYCUS, in Greek mythology, the son of Hermes and father of Anticleia, mother of Odysseus. He lived at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and was famous as a thief and swindler. On one occasion he met his match. Sisyphus, who had lost some cattle, suspected Autolycus of being the thief, but was unable to bring it home to him, since he possessed the power of changing everything that was touched by his hands. Sisyphus accordingly burnt his name into the hoofs of his cattle, and, during a visit to Autolycus, recognized his property. It is said that on this occasion Sisyphus seduced Autolycus’s daughter Anticleia, and that Odysseus was really the son of Sisyphus, not of Laertes, whom Anticleia afterwards married. The object of the story is to establish the close connexion between Hermes, the god of theft and cunning, and the three persons—Sisyphus, Odysseus, Autolycus—who are the incarnate representations of these practices. Autolycus is also said to have instructed Heracles in the art of wrestling, and to have taken part in the Argonautic expedition.
Iliad, x. 267; Odyssey, xix. 395; Ovid, Metam. xi. 313; Apollodorus i. 9; Hyginus, Fab. 201.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bení (river)

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​BENÍ, a river of Bolivia, a tributary of the Madeira, rising in the elevated Cordilleras near the city of La Paz and at first known as the Rio de La Paz, and flowing east, and north-east, to a junction with the Mamoré at 10° 20′ S. lat. to form the Madeira. Fully one-half of its length is through the mountainous districts of central Bolivia, where it is fed by a large number of rivers and streams from the snowclad peaks, and may be described as a raging torrent. Below Reyes its course is through the forest-covered hills and open plains of northern Bolivia, where some of the old Indian missions were located. The lower river is navigable for 217 m. from Reyes to the Esperanza rapids, 18 m. above its confluence with the Mamoré, where a fall of 20 ft. in a distance of 330 yds. obstructs free navigation. Its principal affluent is the Madre de Dios, or Mayu-tata, which rises in the eastern Cordilleras about 35 m. east of Cuzco, and flows in an east and north-east direction through northern Bolivia to a junction with the Bení 120 m. above its mouth. The principal tributaries of the Madre de Dios are the Inambari and Paucartambo, both large rivers, and the Chandless, Marcapata, and Tambopata. In length and size of its tributaries the Madre de Dios is a more important river than the Bení itself, and is navigable during the wet season to the foot of the Andes, 180 m. from Cuzco.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Beothuk

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​BEOTHUK, a tribe of North American Indians formerly dwelling in the interior of Newfoundland. A certain mystery attaches to them, since investigation of the few words of their language which have survived suggests that they were of distinct stock. The name (of Micmac origin) is said to mean simply “red men.” They were bitterly hostile to the French settlers, and were hunted down and killed off until 1820, when a few survivors made their escape into Labrador. The last of them is believed to have died in 1829.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berbera

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​BERBERA, chief town and principal port of the British Somaliland protectorate, North-East Africa, 155 m. S. of Aden, in 10° 26′ N., 45° 4′ E. Berbera stands at the head of a deep inlet which forms the only completely sheltered haven on the south side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the residence of the commissioner of the protectorate and the headquarters of the Somaliland battalion of the King’s African Rifles. The harbour is eleven to thirteen fathoms deep at the entrance (indicated by a lighthouse), decreasing to five fathoms near the shore. Ocean-going steamers find ample accommodation. There are two piers and numerous warehouses. The town is built in two divisions—the native town to the east, the new town, laid out by the Egyptians (1875–1877), to the west. The majority of the better-class houses are of rubble, one-storeyed and flat-roofed. The public buildings include the fort, hospital and barracks. There are a Roman Catholic mission-house and convent and a government school. The affairs of the town are administered by a municipality. The water-supply is brought to the town by an aqueduct from the hills some 8 m. distant. The bulk of the inhabitants are Somali, who have abandoned a nomadic life and adopted largely the ways of the Arab and Indian traders. The permanent population is under 10,000; but from October to April the population rises to 30,000 or more by the arrival of caravans from Ogaden and Dolbahanta. The traders bring with them tents on the backs of camels and these are pitched near the native town. Their merchandise consists of sheep and goats, gum and resin, skins and ostrich feathers. The trade is almost entirely with Aden, of which Berbera may be considered a commercial dependency. The value of the goods brought in yearly by caravan exceeds on the average £100,000. The total trade of the port for the five years 1901–1902 to 1905–1906 averaged over £200,000 a year. The chief articles of import are cotton goods (European white longcloth and American grey shirting), rice and jowari, flour, dates, sugar and tobacco (the last from Rotterdam). Berbera is said to have been founded by the Ptolemies among the Barbari of the adjacent coast lands. It fell subsequently into the possession of Arabs and was included in the Mahommedan state of Adel. At the time of the visit to the town of R. F. Burton and J. H. Speke (1854) it was governed by its own sheiks. In 1870 it was claimed by the khedive Ismail, but was not permanently occupied by Egypt until 1875. In 1884 it passed into the possession of Great Britain (see Somaliland, §2, History).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berat

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​BERAT (Slav. Byelgorod; Turk. Arnaut-Beligradi), the capital of a sanjak in the vilayet of Iannina, southern Albania, Turkey; on the river Ergene, Ergeni or Osum, a left-hand tributary of the Semeni. Pop. (1900) about 15,000. Berat is a fortified town, situated in a fertile valley, which produces wine, olive-oil, fruit and grain. It is the see of an Orthodox metropolitan, and the inhabitants, of whom two-thirds are Albanian and the remainder principally Greek, are equally divided in religion between Christianity and Islam.