Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/302

AURORA BOREALIS. realis (Boston, 1873); Fritz, Verzeichniss von Beobachtungen des Polarlichtes (Vienna, 1873); Rubenson, Catalogue des aurores boréales ob- servées en Suède (Stockholm, 1879-82). The reports of the various international expeditions for the observation of meteorology and magnet- ism in the polar regions during 1881-83 fill about 30 volumes, of which one-fourth treat of the aurora. The Belgian and other expeditions to the Antarctic contain a small but relatively im- portant contribution from that region. The pioneer work in this line was that done by the French Expédition du Nord (1838-42), whose volumes on auroras were prepared by Bravais and Martius. The question of the altitude of the aurora has been reviewed by C. Abbe in an article under that title, published in Terrestrial Magnetism (Baltimore, 1900).

AURORA LEIGH, le. A novel in blank verse, by Mrs. Browning (q.v.), which tells of the childhood of a young girl; the death of her Italian mother; her return to her father's Eng- lish home; her gradually passing despair in her new surroundings; her love for her cousin, Romney Leigh; her melancholy disillusions, and lier final marriage with him. Written during Mrs. Browning's early married life in Florence, it was published in 1857. She subsequently wrote of this poem that it was "the most mature of my works — the one in which my highest con- victions of work and art have entered."

AURUNGZEBE, n'rung-zeb', or AURANGZIB (Hind., 'ornament of the throne'). The last great Emperor of the Mogul dynasty in India. He was born October 22, 1618, and died February 21, 1707. He was the third son of Shah Jehan (q.v.), and in religion he was a bigoted Sunni. He was set by his father over the Mogul Deccan, while his elder brothers, Dara and Shuja, resided respectively at Agra, with the court, and in Bengal. The youngest brother of Aurungzebe, named Murad, was viceroy of Gujerat. In 1657 Shah Jehan fell seriously ill, and a contest for the throne was immediately begun by his sons. Aurungzebe, by a mixture of duplicity and fanaticism, outwitted his brothers, the two elder of whom he murdered, and made his father a prisoner in his own palace of Agra, and kept him so until the death of the latter, possibly by foul play, in 1665. The usur]ier assumed the title of Alumgir, or 'con- queror of the world.' The reign of Aurung- zebe, which began in 1658, was troubled, al- most as soon as it had begun, by the opposition of a Mahratta chieftain from the mountains of Konkan, named Sivaji. Treachery was employed against this wily foe in vain, for he remained independent until his death, in 1680. A religious war against the Rajah of Udaipur. which dragged on for several years, resulted unsuccessfully for Aurungzebe. who was forced to abandon his military operations in Rajputana in 1682 on account of an abortive rebellion of his son Akbar. Between 1682 and 1689, however, Aurungzebe conquered the sultans of Bejapur and Golkonda, and thereby brought the Moguls into touch with the English at Madras. The closing years of Aurungzebe's long reign were full of sorrow, and it is noteworthy that he alone, of all the Mogul emperors. forbade the composition of any history of his reign. Despite the external pomp and ceremony the Mogul Empire was tottering to its

fall. The treachery of Aurungzebe alienated Mohammedan Shiites from him, while his religious bigotry won for him the undying hatred of the Hindus, whose faith he had insulted and had endeavored to exterminate. Consult Stanley Lane-Poole, Aurungzib (London, 1893).

AUSABLE, 6-s;i'b'l. A town in Clinton County, N. Y., on the Ausable River, a short distance west of Lake Champlain. Population, in 1890, 2532; in 1900, 2195.

AUSABLE CHASM. A deep, narrow gorge, two miles in length, worn by the Ausable River in the hard quartz sandstone of the Potsdam formation, popular for its scenic attractions. The rocks of the neighborhood are traversed by numerous faults or lines of displacement, along which lines the hard rocks have been to some extent crushed and broken. The river has taken advantage of these lines of weakness, and has worn its zigzag course to a depth, in places, of 175 feet along the almost vertical fault planes, thus affording an excellent example of the relation between faults and lines of drainage.

AUS'CULTA'TION (Lat. auscultare, to lis- ten). A mode of exploration — by listening — of the condition of the heart, the lungs, the pleura, the (Esophagus, certain arteries and veins, the abdominal organs, the gastro-intestinal tract, and the gravid uterus. Diseases, especially those of the heart and lungs, may be detected by listen- ing to the sounds produced in the cavity of the chest. This is done either by the unassisted ear (immediate auscultation) or by the aid of a simple sound-conveying instrument, the stethoscope (q.v.) (mediate auscultation). The nor- mal sounds produced by respiration and the beating of the heart are readily distinguished by the trained ear from the several abnormal sounds indicating disease. Auscultation is one of the most important means of diagnosis. Hip- pocrates had observed the friction-sound in dry pleurisy as well as succussion in pyopneumo- thorax. Auenbrugger (q.v.) of Vienna, in 1761, introduced percussion (q.v.), and Piorry (q.v.) of France invented the pleximeter. Both proba- bly appreciated some of the facts of auscultation. But Laennec (q.v.), in 1816, was the first to demonstrate the great value of auseulation and to introduce it into general use. Raynaud, in 1829, and Collin, in 1831. added respectively to our knowledge of pleuritic friction and ])cricar- dial friction. (See Perci'SSIox.) According to the views, however, then generally held by physi- cians, the sounds produced by auscultation and percussion were capable of directly revealing the nature of diseases. In 1839 Skoda (q.v.), in his Abhandlung über Auskultation und Perkussion, demonstrated that those sounds were in the first instance only manifestations of peculiar phys- ical states in the body. Being directly produced by cei'tain diseases, those states, and not the sounds caused by them, must be considered as the true symptoms from which the character of diseases can be inferred. Consult: Guttmann, Handbook of Physical Diagnosis, translated by Napier (New York, 1880); Flint, Manual of Auscultation and Percussion (Philadelphia, 1883).

AUSGLEICH (ous'gltK) OF 1867, The agreement or treaty between Austria and Hungary which forms the basis of the political organization of the dual monarchy, Austria-Hun-