Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/688

 652 ARCHIPELAGO vented there several useful hydraulic machines, including the Archimedean screw, which he applied to drainage and irrigation. Vitnmus says that King Hiero, suspecting that a golden crown had been fraudulently alloyed with sil- ver asked Archimedes to discover if it were so ' Going one day into the bath tub, it chanced to be full of water, and he instantly saw that as much water must run over the edge of the tub as was equal to the bulk of his body. Perceiving that this gave him a mode of determining the bulk and specific gravity of the crown, he leaped out of the bath and ran home, crying Eureka, eureka, " I have found it, I have found it." This was the origin of his discovery of the important principle that a body plunged in a fluid loses as much of its weight as is equal to the weight of an equal volume of the fluid. In his old age he defended his native Syracuse against the Romans under Marcellus with great mechanical skill, and later historians say that he burned the Roman ships by concentrating upon them the sun's rays from numerous mirrors. His purely mathe- matical works still extant demonstrate him to have far excelled all those who preceded him. The most celebrated are those on the ratio of the sphere and cylinder, on the ratio of the circum- ference to a diameter, on spiral lines, and on the parabola. He requested a cylinder and sphere to be placed upon his tombstone, and when Mar- cellus had stormed Syracuse, and Archimedes had been killed by a Roman soldier, the Roman general conferred upon him an honorable burial, and caused the tombstone to be in- scribed as he had desired. Cicero, about 140 years afterward, being appointed quaestor over Sicily, sought and found the tomb of Archime- des, overgrown with weeds and thorns. ARCHIPELAGO (Gr. prefix &p X i, main, and irttayof, sea), originally a specific name applied to the ^Egean sea, but now a generic term designating any body of water containing a great number of islands, and applied also to the group of islands itself. I. The Grecian archi- pelago (the ^Egean, in the wider sense of the word) is an arm of the Mediterranean sea, ex- tending northward upward of 400 m., with an average breadth of about 200 m. Its geo- graphical position is between lat. 35 and 41 JS., and Ion. 23 and 28 E. Turkey in Europe forms its northern and northwestern coasts, Asia Minor its eastern, and Greece its western, while its southern limit is marked by the island of Candia or Crete. Within these limits the ^Egean forms an extremely irregular out- line, having numerous armlets and indentations, among which may be mentioned the gulfs of Nauplia (or of Argolis), ^Egina (the Saronic), Volo (the Pagasean), and Salonica (the Tber- maic), all on the west. It is studded with a vast number of islands, ranging in size from mere rocky islets to areas of 4,000 sq. m. (Can- dia), and mostly composed of calcareous massX es, forming high bluffs or mountain clusters, rising abruptly from the sea. Many of the ARCHITECTURE mountains reach a height of 2,000 feet, while the highest summit, on Negropont or Euboea, exceeds 6,000 feet. The ^Egean islands, ex- clusive of Euboea, the largest of all, are divided into three groups, viz. : the northeastern, in- cluding the islands of Thasos, Samothrace, Im- bros, Lemnos, Tenedos, and Lesbos ; the Cycla- des, forming a kind of insular continuation of Euboea and Hellas proper (see CYCLADES); and the Sporades N., E., and W. of the pre- ceding (see SPOBA.DES). Most of the Cyclades and the northern and western Sporades be- long to the Greek kingdom, while Turkey pos- sesses the northeastern group and the eastern Sporades. Many of the islands are pictur- esque in scenery, and all the arable portions are extremely fertile. The principal produc- tions are silk, cotton, honey, wine, figs, raisins, oranges, and other fruits. Coral and sponge are found among the Sporades, while the Cy- clades furnish the pure white marble known as the Parian, from Paros, one of the group, where it was first worked. Here also was found (about 1627) the Parian chronicle, in the Arundel collection, so full of historical inter- est. In the channel of Negropont (the Eu- ripus) the tide frequently runs in a given direction at the rate of 6 to 8 m. an hour, and then suddenly, without any known cause, sets in the opposite direction at nearly the same rate. The climate of the islands is salubrious, the inhabitants are hardy, and the women noted for beauty. The localities of the ^Ige- an are filled with classic and sacred associa- tions. II. The second in importance is the Indian archipelago, which includes that exten- sive insular region of the eastern hemisphere, extending from the S. E. coast of Asia to Aus- tralia, embracing the Philippine group, Suma- tra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and the Molucca and Banda isles, and stretching between lat. 11 S. and 20 N., and Ion. 95* and 185 E. This immense area is bounded by the Chinese sea, the Pacific, Australia, and the Indian ocean. The population of the archipelago consists of two distinct races, the Malay and the negro. ARCHITECTURE (Lat. architectura, from Gr. apxirtiiTuv, a master workman), the art of building. This term embraces every kind of structure except works of defence and ships. The styles of architecture, like other historical monuments, may be divided into two classes, the first comprising the barbarous art of those nations which lie outside the circle of civiliza- tion, and the second comprising the historical styles, beginning with the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek, and reaching to our own day. The Assyrian and Greek give evidence of hav- ing arisen from a system of wooden construc- tion ; in the Egyptian the primitive material seems to have been mud or unburnt bricks. In the subsequent use of stone the forms proper to the original materials became as it were fos- silized, and continued in use long after their origin and meaning were forgotten. Of the early achievements and of the progressive steps