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

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​ALMORA, a town and district of British India, the chief town and administrative headquarters of the Kumaon division of the United Provinces, situated on a mountain-ridge of the Himalayas 5494 ft. above the sea. Pop. (1901) 8596. The town has a college called after Sir Henry Ramsay; a government high school; a Christian girls’ school; and a large cantonment. The town was captured by the Gurkhas in 1790, who constructed a fort on the eastern extremity of the ridge. Another citadel, Fort Moira, is situated on the other extremity of the ridge. Almora is also celebrated as the scene of the British victory which terminated the war with Nepal in April 1815, and which resulted in the evacuation of Kumaon by the Gurkhas and the annexation of the province by the British.
The District of Almora was constituted in 1891, together with Naini Tal, by a redistribution of the two former districts of Kumaon and the Tarai. It lies among the mountains of Kumaon, between the upper waters of the Ganges and the Gogra, here called the Kali. Area, 5419 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 465,893, showing an increase of 13% during the decade. Tea is grown in the district, which includes the military sanatorium of Ranikhet. The nearest railway via Naini Tal is the extension of the Oudh and Rohilkhand line from near Bareilly to Kathgodam.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alms

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​ALMS, the giving of relief, and the relief given, whether in goods or money, to the poor, particularly applied to the charity bestowed under a sense of religious obligation (see Charity and Charities). The word in O. Eng. was aelmysse, and is derived through the Teutonic adaptation (cf. the modern Ger. almosen) of the Latinized form of the Gr. ἐλεημοσύνη, compassion or mercy, from ἔλεος, pity. The English word “eleemosynary,” that which is given in the way of alms, charitable, gratuitous, derives direct from the Greek. “Alms” is often, like “riches,” wrongly taken as a plural word.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Almoner

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​ALMONER (from Lat. eleemosynarius, through med. Lat. almosynarius, almonarius, and Fr. almosnier, aumosnier, &c., mod. Fr. aumônier), in the primitive sense, an officer in religious houses to whom belonged the management and distribution of the alms of the house. By the ancient canons all monasteries were to spend at least a tenth part of their income in alms to the poor, and all bishops were required to keep almoners. Almoners, as distinct from chaplains, appear early as attached to the court of the kings of France; but the title of grand almoner of France first appears in the reign of Charles VIII. ​He was an important court official whose duties comprised the superintendence of the Chapel Royal and all the religious ceremonies of the court. He was a director of the great hospital for the blind (Quinze-Vingts), and nominated the regius professors and readers in the Collège de France. The office was revived by Napoleon I., was abolished in 1830, and again created by Napoleon III.; it existed till 1870. In England, the royal almonry still forms a part of the sovereign’s household, the officers being the hereditary grand almoner (the marquess of Exeter), the lord high almoner, the sub-almoner, and the secretary to the lord high almoner. The office of hereditary grand almoner is now merely titular. The lord high almoner is an ecclesiastical officer, usually a bishop, who had the rights to the forfeiture of all deodands (q.v.) and the goods of a felo de se, for distribution among the poor. He had also, by virtue of an ancient custom, the power of giving the first dish from the king’s table to whatever poor person he pleased, or, instead of it, alms in money, which custom is kept up by the lord high almoner distributing as many silver pennies as the sovereign has years of age to poor men and women on Maundy Thursday (q.v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agostino and Agnolo Da Siena

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​AGOSTINO and AGNOLO (or Angelo) DA SIENA, Italian architects and sculptors in the first half of the 14th century. Della Valle and other commentators deny that they were brothers. They certainly studied together under Giovanni Pisano, and in 1317 were jointly appointed architects of their native town, for which they designed the Porto Romana, the church and convent of St Francis, and other buildings. On the recommendation of the celebrated Giotto, who styled them the best sculptors of the time, they executed in 1330 the tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati in the cathedral of Arezzo, which Giotto had designed. It was esteemed one of the finest artistic works of the 14th century, but unfortunately was destroyed by the French under the duke of Anjou.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agra Canal

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​AGRA CANAL, an important Indian irrigation work, available also for navigation, in Delhi, Gurgaon, Muttra and Agra districts, and Bharatpur state. The canal receives its water from the Jumna river at Okla, about 10 m. below Delhi. The weir across the Jumna was the first attempted in Upper India upon a foundation of fine sand; it is about 800 yds. long, and rises 7 ft. above the summer level of the river. From Okla the canal follows the high land between the Khari-nadi and the Jumna, and finally joins the Banganga river about 20 m. below Agra. Navigable branches connect the canal with Muttra and Agra. It was opened in 1874.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agostini, Leonardo

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​AGOSTINI, LEONARDO, Italian antiquary of the 17th century, was born at Siena. After being employed for some time to collect works of art for the Barberini palace, he was appointed by Pope Alexander VII. superintendent of antiquities in the Roman states. He issued a new edition of Paruta’s Sicilian Medals, with engravings of 400 additional specimens; and in conjunction with Giovanni Bellori (1615–1696) he also published a work on antique sculptured gems, which was translated into Latin by Jakob Gronovius (Amsterdam, 1685).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agoranomi

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​AGORANOMI, magistrates in the republics of Greece, whose position and duties were in many respects similar to those of the aediles of Rome. In Athens there were ten, chosen annually by lot, five of whom took charge of the city and five of the Peiraeus. They maintained order in the markets, settled disputes, examined the quality of the articles exposed for sale, tested weights and measures, collected the harbour dues and enforced the shipping regulations.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agordat

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​AGORDAT, a town of Eritrea, N.E. Africa on the route between Massawa and Kassala. At Agordat on the 21st of December 1893 the Italian troops under Colonel Arimondi inflicted a severe defeat on the {followers of the khalifa. Agordat is protected by a strong fort. (See Eritrea and Sudan, History.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agostino, Paolo

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​AGOSTINO, or Agostini [Augustinus], PAOLO (1593–1629), Italian musician, was born at Valerano, and studied under G. B. Nanini, as we learn from the dedication in the third and fourth books of his masses, subsequently becoming the son-in-law of his master. He succeeded Ugolini as conductor of the pope’s orchestra in St. Peter’s. His musical compositions are numerous and of great merit, an Agnus Dei for eight voices being specially admired.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agoult, Marie Catherine Sophie de Flavigny, Comtesse d'

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​AGOULT, MARIE CATHERINE SOPHIE DE FLAVIGNY, Comtesse d’ (1805–1876), French author, whose nom de plume was “Daniel Stern,” was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 31st of December 1805. Her father was a French officer who had served in the army of the emigrant princes, and her mother was the daughter of a Frankfort banker. She was married in 1827 to the comte Charles d’Agoult. In Paris she gathered round her a brilliant society which included Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Ingres, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Heine and others. She was separated from her husband, and became the mistress of Franz Liszt. During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, and figures in the Lettres d’un voyageur as “Arabella.” By Liszt she had three children—a son who died young; Blandine, who married M. Émile Ollivier; and Cosima, who married first Hans von Bülow and later Richard Wagner. The story of her breach with Liszt is told under a very slight disguise in her novel Nélida (1845). On her return to Paris in 1841 she began to write art criticisms for the Presse, and in 1844 she contributed to the Revue des deux Mondes articles on Bettina von Arnim and on Heinrich Heine, but her views were not acceptable to the editor, and Daniel Stern withdrew to become a contributor to the Revue indépendante. Mme. d’Agoult was an ardent apostle of the ideas of ’48, and from this date her salon, which had been literary and artistic, took on a more political tone; revolutionists of various nationalities were welcomed by her, and she had an especial friendship and sympathy for Daniele Manin. In 1857 she produced a national drama, Jeanne Darc, which was translated into Italian and presented with brilliant success at Turin. The most important section of Daniel Stern’s work is her political and historical essays: Lettres républicaines (1848), Esquisses morales et politiques (1849), Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (3 vols., 1850–1853), Histoire des commencements de la République aux Pays-Bas (1872). Mme. d’Agoult died in Paris on the 5th of March 1876. Her daughter Claire Christine (b. 1830), who married Guy de Charnacé, is known as a writer.
See Mme. d’Agoult, Mes Souvenirs (1806–1833), 1877; A. Cuvillier Fleury, Portraits révolutionnaires, vol. i. (1889); J. Mazzini, Lettres de Joseph Mazzini a Daniel Stern (1872): A. Pommier, Madame la comtesse d’Agoult (Daniel Stern), 1876; A. Ungherini, “Daniel Stern” in the Revista republicana (1880, No. 9); S. Rocheblave, Une Amitié romanesque, George Sand et Madame d’Agoult (1895).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agouti

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​AGOUTI, or Aguti, the West Indian name of Dasyprocta aguti, a terrestrial rodent of the size of a rabbit, common to Trinidad and Guiana, and classed in the family Caviidae. Under the same term may be included the other species of Dasyprocta, of which there are about half a score in tropical America. Agoutis are slender-limbed rodents, with five front and three hind toes (the first front toe very minute), and very short tails. The hair, especially on the hind-quarters, is coarse and somewhat rough; the colour being generally rufous brown. The molar teeth have cylindrical crowns, with several islands and a single lateral fold of enamel when worn. In habits agoutis are nocturnal, dwelling in forests, where they conceal themselves during the day in hollow tree-trunks, or in burrows among roots. Active and graceful in their movements, their pace is either a kind of trot or a series of springs following one another so rapidly as to look like a gallop. They take readily to water, in which they swim well. Their food comprises leaves, roots, nuts and other fruits. They do much harm to plantations of sugar-cane and bananas. In captivity the females produce only one or two young at a birth.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agram

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​AGRAM (Hungarian Zágráb, Croatian Zagreb), the capital of Croatia-Slavonia, and a royal free town of Hungary; pleasantly situated between the north bank of the Save and the mountains which culminate in Sljeme (3396 ft.); 187 m. by rail S. of Vienna. Pop. (1890) 38,742; (1900) 57,930, or with garrison 61,002. Agram is the seat of the ban, or viceroy, of Croatia-Slavonia, of the Banal and Septemviral courts, the highest in the land, and of a chamber of commerce. It is also the meeting-place of the parliament; but local affairs are conducted by a municipal council. The city is divided into three districts. The Kapitel-Stadt, sometimes called the Bishop’s Town, with the palace of the Roman Catholic archbishop, and his late Gothic cathedral, dating from the 15th century, lies eastward of the Medvešćak, a brook which flows into the Save. The Upper Town, on high ground west of the Medvešćak, contains the palace of the ban and the natural history museum. On the south, the Lower Town is separated from the other districts by the Ilica, a long street traversed by a cable tramway. In it are the business and industrial quarters; the palace of justice; the academy of science, with picture-galleries, a library and a collection of antiquities; the theatre; the Franz Josef University, founded in 1874 to teach theology, law and philosophy; the synagogue; and the only Protestant church existing in the country at the beginning of the 20th century. Roman Catholic churches and schools are numerous. Besides the large Maximir park and botanical gardens, many of the squares are planted with trees and adorned with statues; while the whole city is surrounded by vineyards and country houses. Tobacco, leather, linen, carpets and war-material are manufactured in Agram, which also contains the works of the Hungarian state railways, and has a brisk trade in grain, wine, potash, honey, silk and porcelain.
In 1094 Agram was founded by Ladislaus I. of Hungary, as the seat of a bishop; and on the expulsion of its Mongol colony, in 1242, it was raised to the rank of a royal free city. For centuries a bitter feud raged between the Kapitel-Stadt and the Upper Town, until these rivals were forced to join hands against the Turks. Agram, already the political centre of Croatia-Slavonia, was selected as the capital in 1867. It suffered severely from earthquake in 1880 and 1901.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Algae/Ecology

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​When it is sought to consider algae with a view to the correlation of the external form to the conditions of life, a subject the study of which under the name of ecology has been latterly pursued with great success among land plants, it is difficult as yet to arrive at generalizations which Ecology.are trustworthy. Among land plants, as is well known, similarity of environment has of ten called forth similar adaptations among plants of widely separated families. The similarity of certain xerophilous Euphorbiaceae to Cactaceae is a ready illustration of this phenomenon. From what has been already said it is evident that among algae also strikingly similar forms exist in widely different groups. Instances might be multiplied. Compare, for example, the blue-green Gloeocapsa with the green Gloeocystis, the red Batrachospermum with the green Draparnaldia, the red Corallina with the green Cymopolia, the green Enteromorpha with the brown Asperococcus, the green Ulva with the red Porphyra, the red Nemalion with the brown Castagnea, and so on. But on the one hand similar forms seem to grow often under different conditions, while on the other hand different forms flourish under the same conditions. The conceivable variations in the conditions which would count in algal life are variations in the chemical character of the water—whether fresh, brackish or salt; or in the rate of movement of the water, whether relatively quiet, or a stream or a surf; or in the degree of illumination with the depth and transparency of the water. But the laws which determine the associations of various algae under one environment are as yet little understood. The occurrence of a plentiful mucilage in many freshwater forms is, however, doubtless a provision against desiccation on exposure. The fine subdivision of filamentous and net-forms is similarly a provision for easy access of water and light to all parts. The calcareous deposits in Characeae, Corallinaceae and Siphonaceae are at once a protection against attack and a means of support. The whip-forms would seem to be designed to resist injury from surf or current. The vesicles of Fucaceae and Laminariaceae prevent the sinking of the bulkier forms. But why certain Fucaceae favour certain zones in the littoral region, why certain epiphytes are confined to certain hosts, why Red and Brown Algae are not better represented in fresh water or Green Algae in salt,—these are problems to which it is difficult to find a ready answer.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Algae/Habit

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​In many algae certain branches of limited growth bear a remarkable resemblance to leaves. The Characeae among freshwater algae and the Sargassaceae among marine algae might be cited as examples. Surveying the whole range of algae life, Oltmanns distinguishes bush-forms,Habit. whip forms, net-forms, leaf-forms, sack-forms, dorsi-ventral forms, and cushions, plates and crusts. The similarity of outline in many species to that of trees and shrubs will strike any one who examines algae mounted for the herbarium. Cladophora and Bryopsis among monosiphonous forms, Chara, Polysiphonia, Ceramium and Cystoseira among larger algae, are illustrations of this. The whip-forms are represented by Spirogyra, Chaetomorpha, Scytosiphon, Nemalion, Himanthalia and Chorda. Net-forms are found in Hydrodictyon and Microdictyon. The leaf-forms are very varied and owe their existence to the advantage accruing from the exposure of a large surface to the influence of the light. In some cases such as Delesseria, Neurymenia, Fucus, Alaria, the leaf-like structure is provided with a strengthening mid-rib, and when as in Delesseria it is also richly veined the resemblance to the leaf of a flowering plant is striking. Laminaria, Padina, Cutleria, Punctaria, Iridaea, Ulva, Porphyra, are leaf-like with a rigidity varying from a fleshy lamina to the thin and pliable. Agarum, Claudea and Struvea are leaf-forms which are perforated like Aldrovanda among flowering plants. Enteromorpha, Asperococcus and Adenocystis are sack-forms. Dorsi-ventral algae are rare. Leveillea jungermanneoides bears a remarkable resemblance to a leafy liverwort. In the next group of forms the simplest are crusts attached to the substratum throughout their extent, and growing at the margin. Such are Myrionema, Ralfsia, Melobesia and Hildebrandtia. Others are attached throughout their extent, but also grow vertical filaments so as to form a velvety pile. Such are Coleochaete, Ochlochaete, Elachistea, Ascocyclus and Rhododermis. Peysonellia squamaria, Melobesia lichenoides, Leathesia difformis are forms which are not attached throughout but grow in plates like the foliaceous lichens.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Audubon, John James

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​AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES (1780–1851), American naturalist, is said to have been born on the 5th of May 1780 in Louisiana, his father being a French naval officer and his mother a Spanish Creole. He was educated in Paris, where he had lessons from the painter, J. L. David. Returning to America in 1798 he settled on a farm near Philadelphia, and gave himself up to the study of natural history, and especially to drawing birds. In 1826 he went to England in the hope of getting his drawings published, and by the following year he had obtained sufficient subscribers to enable him to begin the publication of his Birds of America, which on its completion in 1838 consisted of 435 coloured plates, containing 1055 figures of birds the size of life. Cuvier called it “le plus magnifique monument que l’art ait encore élevé à la nature.” The descriptive matter to accompany the plates appeared at Edinburgh in 5 vols. from 1831 to 1839 under the title of American Ornithological Biography. During the publication of these works Audubon divided his time between Great Britain and America, devoting his leisure to expeditions to various parts of the United States and Canada for the purpose of collecting new material. In 1842 he bought an estate on the Hudson, now Audubon Park in New York City. In 1844 he published in America a popular octavo edition of his Birds of America. He also took up the preparation of a new work, The Quadrupeds of America, with the collaboration of John Bachman, the publication of which was begun in New York in 1846 and finished in 1853–1854. He died at New York on the 27th of January 1851.
See Ornithology; also Audubon and his Journals (1897), by his grand-daughter Maria R. Audubon, with notes by Elliot Coues.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aue

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​AUE, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, at the confluence of the Mulde and Schwarzwasser, 21 m. S.W. from Chemnitz on the railway to Adorf. It has a school of lace-making, foundries, and manufactures of machinery, tin-plate and cotton goods. Pop. (1905) 17,102.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Auerbach, Berthold

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​AUERBACH, BERTHOLD (1812–1882), German novelist, was born on the 28th of February 1812 at Nordstetten in the Württemberg Black Forest. His parents were Jews, and he was intended for the ministry; but after studying philosophy at Tübingen, Munich and Heidelberg, and becoming estranged from Jewish orthodoxy by the study of Spinoza, he devoted himself to literature. He made a fortunate beginning in a romance on the life of Spinoza (1837), so interesting in itself, and so close in its adherence to fact, that it may be read with equal advantage as a novel or as a biography. Dichter und Kaufmann followed in 1839, and a translation of Spinoza’s works in 1841, when Auerbach turned to the class of fiction which has made him famous, the Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (1843), stories of peasant life in the Black Forest. In these, as well as in Barfüssele (1856), Edelweiss (1861), and other novels of greater compass, he depicts the life of the south German peasant as “Jeremias Gotthelf” (Albrecht Bitzius) had painted the peasantry of Switzerland, but in a less realistic spirit. When this vein was exhausted Auerbach returned to his first phase as a philosophical novelist, producing Auf der Höhe (1865), Das Landhaus am Rhein (1869), and other romances of profound speculative tendencies, turning on plots invented by himself. With the exception of Auf der Höhe, these works did not enjoy much popularity, and suffer from lack of form and concentration. ​Auerbach’s fame continues to rest upon his Dorfgeschichten, although the celebrity of even these has been impaired by the growing demand for a more uncompromising realism. Auerbach died at Cannes on the 8th of February 1882.
The first collected edition of Auerbach’s Schriften appeared in 22 vols. in 1863–1864; the best edition is in 18 vols. (1892–1895). Auerbach’s Briefe an seinen Freund J. Auerbach (with a preface by F. Spielhagen) were published in 2 vols. (1884). See E. Zabel, B. Auerbach (1882); and E. Lasker, B. Auerbach, ein Gedenkblatt (1882).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Auger

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​AUGER (from the O. Eng. nafu-gár, nave-borer; the original initial n having been lost, as in “adder,” through a confusion in the case of a preceding indefinite article), a tool for boring (q.v.) or drilling.