Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/65

Rh A B I A B I 49 ABIES. See FIR. ABILA, a city of ancient Syria, the capital of the tetrarchy of Abilene, a territory whose limits and extent it is impossible now to define. The site of Abila is indi cated by some ruins and inscriptions on the banks of the river Barada, between Baalbec and Damascus, about twelve miles from the latter city. Though the names Abel and Abila differ in derivation and in meaning, their similarity has given rise to the tradition that this was the scene of Abel s death. ABILDGAARD, NIKOLAJ, called &quot;the Father of Danish Painting,&quot; was born in 1744. He formed his style on that of Claude and of Nicolas Poussin, and was a cold theorist, inspired not by nature but by art. As a technical painter he attained remarkable success, his tone being very harmonious and even, but the effect, to a foreigner s eye, is rarely interesting. His works are scarcely known out of Copenhagen, where he won an immense fame in his own generation, and where he died in 1809. He was the founder of the Danish school of painting, and the master of Thorwaldsen and Eckersberg. ABIMELECH (~^?, father of the king, or rather perhaps king-father}, occurs first in the Bible as the name of certain kings of the Philistines at Gerar (Gen. xx. 2, xxi. 22, xxvi. 1). From the fact that the name is applied in the inscription of the thirty-fourth psalm to Achish, it has been inferred with considerable probability that it was used as the official designation of the Philistinian kings. The name was also borne by a son of Gideon, judge of Israel, by his Shechemite concubine (Judges viii. 31). On the death of Gideon, who had refused the title of king both for himself and his children, Abimelech set himself to obtain the sovereignty through the influence of his mother s relatives. In pursuance of his plan he slew seventy of his brethren &quot; upon one stone &quot; at Ophrah, Jotham, the youngest of them, alone contriving to escape. This is one of the earliest recorded instances of a practice exceedingly common on the accession of Oriental despots. Abimelech was eventually made king, although his election was opposed by Jotham, who boldly appeared on Mount Gerizim and told the assembled Shechemites the fable of the trees desiring a king. At the end of the third year of his reign the Sheehemites revolted, and under the leadership of Gaal made an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the authority of Abimelech. In Judges ix. there is an account of this insurrection, which is specially interest ing owing to the full details it gives of the nature of the military operations. After totally destroying Shechem, Abimelech proceeded against Thebez, which had also re volted. Here, while storming the citadel, he was struck on the head by the fragment of a millstone thrown from the wall by a woman. To avoid the disgrace of perishing by a woman s hand, he requested his armour-bearer to run him through the body. Though the immediate cause of his death was thus a sword-thrust, his memory was not saved from the ignominy he dreaded (2 Sam. xi. 21). It has been usual to regard Abimelech s reign as the first attempt to establish a monarchy in Israel. The facts, however, seem rather to support the theory of Ewald (Gesch. ii. 444), that Shechem had asserted its independ ence of Israel, when it chose Abimelech as its king. ABINGDON, a parliamentary and municipal borough and market town of England, in Berkshire, on a branch of the Thames, 7 miles south of Oxford, and 51 miles W.N.W. of London. It is a place of great antiquity, and was an important town in the time of the Heptarchy. Its name is derived from an ancient abbey. The streets, whiob are well paved, converge to a spacious area, in which the market is held. In the centre of this area stands the market-house, supported on lofty pillars, with a large hall above, appropriated to the summer assizes for the county, and the transaction of other public business. The town contains two churches, which are said to have been erected by the abbots of Abingdon, one dedicated to St Nicholas and the other to St Helena ; several charitable institutions, and a free grammar school, with scholarships at Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1864 a memorial of Prince Albert was erected at Abingdon, a richly ornamented structure, surmounted by a statue of the Prince. Abingdon was incorporated by Queen Mary. It sends one member to Parliament, and is governed by a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve councillors. In the beginning of the century it manufactured much sail-cloth and sacking; but its chief trade now is in corn and malt, carpets, and coarse linen. It is a station on a branch of the Great Western Railway. Population (1871), 6571. ABIOGENESIS, as a name for the production of living by not-living matter, has of late been superseding the less accurate phrase &quot; Spontaneous Generation.&quot; Professor Huxley, who made use of the word in his presidential address to the British Association in 1870, distinguished Abiogenesis from &quot; Xenogenesis &quot; or &quot; Heterogenesis,&quot; which occurs, or is supposed to occur, not when dead matter produces living matter, but when a living parent gives rise to offspring which passes through a totally different series of states from those exhibited by the parent, and does not return into the parent s cycle of changes. When a &quot; living parent gives rise to offspring; which passes through the same cycle of changes as itself,&quot; there occurs &quot; Homogenesis. ; &quot; Biogenesis &quot; includes both of these. Other names for Abiogenesis are Generatia jEquivoca, Generatio Primaria, Archigenesis (Urzeugung), Archebiosis, &c. The question of Abiogenesis whether under certain conditions living matter is produced by not- living matter as it is one of the most fundamental, is per haps also the oldest in Biology; but within recent years partly because the means of accurate experimentation have been increased and the microscope improved, and partly because the question has been recognised in its impor tant bearings on evolution, the correlation of forces, and the theory of infectious diseases naturalists have been led to bestow more attention upon it than at any previous period. While, therefore, the doctrine of Abiogenesis cannot be said to be either finally established or refuted, it is at least reasonable to believe that we are gradually advancing to a solution. Among the older observers of phenomena bearing on the question may be named Aristotle, who, with the ancients generally, favoured Abiogenesis ; Redi, the founder of the opposite view ; Vallisnieri ; Buffon ; Needham ; and Spallanzani ; among later observers, Schwann and Schulze, Schroeder and Dusch, Pasteur, Pouchet, Haeckel, Huxley, Bastian, and many others. The experiments and observations made by these naturalists, and their results the ingenious ex pedients employed to prevent inaccuracy the interesting and often marvellous transformations which microscopists declare they have witnessed will be discussed in the article HISTOLOGY; here it will be enough to note the general nature of the reasonings with which the opponents and defenders of Abiogenesis support their views. The opponents maintain that all trustworthy observations have hitherto shown living matter to have sprung from pre-existing living matter ; and that the further we search and examine, the smaller becomes the number of those organisms which we cannot demonstrate to have arisen from living parents. They hold that seeming instances of spontaneous generation are usually to be explained by the germ-theory the presence of invisible germs in the air ; and they call to their aid such high authorities as Pasteur and Tyndall. The defenders of Abiogenesis, on the other T. 7