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ACTUARY. The name of actuarius, sc. scriba, in ancient Rome, was given to the clerks who recorded the Acta Publica of the senate, and also to the officers who kept the military accounts and enforced the due fulfilment of contracts for military supplies. In its English form the word has undergone a gradual limitation of meaning. At first it seems to have denoted any clerk or registrar; then more particularly the secretary and adviser of any joint-stock company, but especially of an insurance company; and it is now applied specifically to one who makes those calculations as to the probabilities of human life, on which the practice of life assurance and the valuation of reversionary interests, deferred annuities, &c., are based. The first mention of the word in law is in the Friendly Societies Act of 1819, where it is used in the vague sense, “actuaries, or persons skilled in calculation,” but it has received still further recognition in the Friendly Societies Act of 1875 and the Life Assurance Companies Act of 1870. The word has been used with precision since the establishment of the “Institute of Actuaries of Great Britain and Ireland” in 1848. The Quarterly Journal, Charter of Incorporation, and by-laws of this society may be usefully consulted for particulars as to the requirements for membership (see also ). The registrar in the Lower House of Convocation is also called the actuary.

ACUMINATE (from Lat. acumen, point), sharpened or pointed, a word used principally in botany and ornithology, to denote the narrowing or lance-shaping of a leaf or of a bird’s feather into a point, generally at the tip, though sometimes (with regard to a leaf) at the base. The poet William Cowper used the word to denote sharp and keen despair, but other authors, Sir T. Browne, Bacon, Bulwer, &c., use it to explain a material pointed shape.

ACUÑA, CHRISTOVAL DE (1597–c. 1676), Spanish missionary and explorer, was born at Burgos in 1597. He was admitted a Jesuit in 1612, and afterwards sent on mission work to Chile and Peru, where he became rector of the college of Cuenca. In 1639 he accompanied Pedro Texiera in his second exploration of the Amazon, in order to take scientific observations, and draw up a report for the Spanish government. The journey lasted ten months; and on the explorer’s arrival in Peru, Acuña prepared his narrative, while awaiting a ship for Europe. The king of Spain, Philip IV., received the author coldly, and it is said even tried to suppress his book, fearing that the Portuguese, who had just revolted from Spain (1640), would profit by its information. After occupying the positions of procurator of the Jesuits at Rome and censor (calificador) of the Inquisition at Madrid, Acuña returned to South America, where he died, probably soon after 1675. His Nuevo Descubrimiento del Gran Rio de las Amazonas was published at Madrid in 1641; French and English translations (the latter from the French) appeared in 1682 and 1698.

ACUPRESSURE (from Lat. acus, a needle, and premere, to press), the name given to a method of restraining haemorrhage, introduced by Sir J. Y. Simpson, the direct pressure of a metallic needle, either alone or assisted by a loop of wire, being used to close the vessel near the bleeding point.

ACUPUNCTURE (from Lat. acus, a needle, and pungere, to prick), a form of surgical operation, performed by pricking the part affected with a needle. It has long been used by the Chinese in cases of headaches, lethargies, convulsions, colics, &c. (See .)

ADABAZÁR, an important commercial town in the Khoja Ili sanjak of Asia Minor, situated on the old military road from Constantinople to the east, and connected by a branch line with the Anatolian railway. Pop. 18,000 (Moslems, 10,000; Christians, 8000). It was founded in 1540 and enlarged in 1608 by the settlement in it of an Armenian colony. There are silk and linen industries, and an export of tobacco, walnut-wood, cocoons and vegetables for the Constantinople market. Imports are valued at £80,000 and exports at £480,000.

ADAD, the name of the storm-god in the Babylonian-Assyrian pantheon, who is also known as Ramman (“the thunderer”). The problem involved in this double name has not yet been definitely solved. Evidence seems to favour the view that Ramman was the name current in Babylonia, whereas Adad was more common in Assyria. To judge from analogous instances of a double nomenclature, the two names revert to two different centres for the cult of a storm-god, though it must be confessed that up to the present it has been impossible to determine where these centres were. A god Hadad who was a prominent deity in ancient Syria is identical with Adad, and in view of this it is plausible to assume—for which there is also other evidence—that the name Adad represents an importation into Assyria from Aramaic districts. Whether the same is the case with Ramman, identical with Rimmon, known to us from the Old Testament as the chief deity of Damascus, is not certain though probable. On the other hand the cult of a specific storm-god in ancient Babylonia is vouched for by the occurrence of the sign Im—the “Sumerian” or ideographic writing for Adad-Ramman—as an element in proper names of the old Babylonian period. However this name may have originally been pronounced, so much is certain,—that through Aramaic influences in Babylonia and Assyria he was identified with the storm-god of the western Semites, and a trace of this influence is to be seen in the designation Amurru, also given to this god in the religious literature of Babylonia, which as an early name for Palestine and Syria describes the god as belonging to the Amorite district.

The Babylonian storm-god presents two aspects in the hymns, incantations and votive inscriptions. On the one hand he is the god who, through bringing on the rain in due season, causes the land to become fertile, and, on the other hand, the storms that he sends out bring havoc and destruction. He is pictured on monuments and seal cylinders with the lightning and the thunderbolt, and in the hymns the sombre aspects of the god on the whole predominate. His association with the sun-god, Shamash, due to the natural combination of the two deities who alternate in the control of nature, leads to imbuing him with some of the traits belonging to a solar deity. In Syria Hadad is hardly to be distinguished from a solar deity. The process of assimilation did not proceed so far in Babylonia and Assyria, but Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general. Whether the will of the gods is determined through the inspection of the liver of the sacrificial animal, through observing the action of oil bubbles in a basin of water or through the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, it is Shamash and Adad who, in the ritual connected with divination, are invariably invoked. Similarly in the annals and votive inscriptions of the kings, when oracles are referred to, Shamash and Adad are always named as the gods addressed, and their ordinary designation in such instances is bēlē biri, “lords of divination.” The consort of Adad-Ramman is Shala, while as Amurru his consort is called Aschratum. (See )

ADAGIO (Ital. ad agio, at ease), a term in music to indicate slow time; also a slow movement in a symphony, sonata, &c., or an independent piece, such as Mozart’s pianoforte “Adagio in B minor.”

ADAIR, JOHN (d. 1722), Scottish surveyor and map-maker of the 17th century. Nothing is known of his parentage, birthplace or early life. His name first came before the public in 1683, when a prospectus was published in Edinburgh entitled An Account of the Scottish Atlas, stating that “the Privy Council of Scotland has appointed John Adair, mathematician and skilfull mechanick, to survey the shires.” In 1686 an act of tonnage was passed in Adair’s favour. He was then employed on a survey of the Scottish coast and two years later was made a fellow of the Royal Society. Two other acts of tonnage were passed for