473 



ARACHIDIC ACID. 



ABAJLEAN. 



Sir John Sinclair, to whom, as President of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture, much useful information was communicated, which he industri- 

 ously compiled. (Sinclair's ' Account of Systems of Husbandry," &c., 

 2 vols. 8vo.) The Surveys and Reports oil the agriculture of the 

 different counties, prepared for the Board of Agriculture, are replete 

 with useful information as to what is the actual practice ; and among 

 a multitude of agricultural publications, journals, and proceedings of 

 societies, we may notice London's ' Encyclopaedia of Agriculture.' That 

 of Wilson, published by Fullarton ; and that of Morton, published by 

 Blackie, are also useful a books of reference. The works of Professor 

 Low, and Henry Stephens, of Edinburgh, may also be consulted. The 

 Journals of the Agricultural Societies of England and Scotland, and 

 the weekly agricultural papers, ' Bell's Messenger,' ' Gardeners' Chro- 

 nicle,' ' Mark Lane Express,' and ' North British Agriculturist,' are full 

 of valuable agricultural information. 



The French are rich in elementary works, among which the ' Theatre 

 d'Agriculture/ par Olivier de Serres, is a standard work. It was written 

 at the express desire of Henry IV. and his minister Sully, and published 

 in 1600 ; the last edition, in four volumes quarto, Paris, 1804, with 

 numerous additions, and the ' Cours Complet d'Agriculture,' by various 

 members of the Institute of France, published in 1820, contain every- 

 thing that was then known of the science of agriculture. A little work 

 of much merit may be mentioned, called ' Le Manuel Pratique du 

 Laboureur,' by Ch'imbouille Dupetitmont, Paris, 1826, two volumes, 

 duodecimo ; and also ' Le Calendrier du bon Cultivateur,' by C. I. A. 

 Mathieu de Dombasle (on the plan of Arthur Young's 'Farmer's 

 Calendar '), Paris, 1833, duodecimo, is a very useful work. The ' Journal 

 d'Agriculture Pratique ' is another more recent valuable agricultural 

 periodical. Numerous works on particular branches, and the annals 

 and memoirs of various agricultural societies, are constantly being 

 published. Among the German authors we shall only mention Thaer, 

 whose works we have quoted above, and which form a most complete 

 body of theoretical and practical agriculture : his experiments made on 

 a large scale at the national farm of Mogelin near Frankfort on the 

 Oder, and repeated for many years, can be fully depended upon. We 

 have also quoted the work of Mr. van Aelbroek, 'De I' Agriculture 

 Pratique de la Flandre,' Paris, 1830, octavo, as a useful and interesting 

 work. 



ARACHIDIC ACID (C'^H^O,). A crystalline acid found hi the 

 oil expressed from the seeds of the Ararhis hypogita., a plant growing 

 in Guinea and Brazil It crystallises in small brilliant plates, which .fuse 

 at 167" Fahr., is very slightly soluble in cold alcohol, but easily soluble 

 in boiling absolute alcohol and in ether. Arachidic acid forms an ether 

 and an extensive series of salts which have recently been investigated 

 by Goessman and Scheven (' Ann. der Chimie u. Pharm.,' xcvii. 257). 

 It also forms a compound with glycerin termed A rachine. 



ARACHINE. [ARACHIDIC ACID.] 



ARACK, or ARRAC. This word is derived from the Arabic word 

 unit:, which properly signifies perspiration. Under various modes of 

 spelling it is employed as a general name for distilled spirits along the 

 northern coast of Africa, including Egypt, over all Asia, and even in 

 the north and eastern parts of Europe. This spirit is prepared from 

 different substances, from the juice of the areka palm and rice, from 

 palm-sugar and rice, but more especially from the sweet juice (toddy) 

 extracted from the unexpanded flowers of different species of the palm 

 tribe. The best sorts are produced at Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon. In 

 Ceylon, where a large quantity of arack is manufactured, it is entirely 

 distilled from coco-nut tree toddy. The 'toddy topes,' or coco-nut 

 tree orchards, are very extensive in Ceylon, and their produce is 

 collected for the distillation of arack, and the manufacture of sugar, 

 vinegar, and oil : the latter chiefly, for the production of which steam- 

 machinery is employed. 



In Ceylon, when it is intended to draw toddy from a tope, the toddy- 

 drawer selects a tree of easy ascent near to the centre of the tope, the 

 stem of which he surrounds with a number of bands made of creepers, 

 al>< mt a foot distant from one another. Upon these bands he ascends 

 the tree, and by means of the steins of creeping plants or coir ropes, 

 he connects the heads of a number of trees, so as to enable him to 

 pass from tree to tree in the subsequent operation of collecting the 

 produce. 



The ordinary implements of a toddy-drawer are a large broad knife, 

 whjch he carries in a coffer or basket suspended by a cord tied numd 

 his body ; a mallet, consisting of a piece of hard wood about a foot in 

 length ; and the shell of a large gourd, which is suspended round his 

 waist. When a tree is in a state fit for yielding sweet juice, the 

 t<xldy-drawer ties the flowering spath in different places, by means of 

 the white leaves of young branches. This process has the effect of 

 : i ting a bud from blowing. The spath is then bruised along its 

 whole length by means of slight blows with the mallet or bat of hard 

 wood. This operation occupies a few minutes, and requires to be 

 regularly repeated every morning and evening for six or seven days. 

 Iu a few days after the spath has been tied, a few inches of it is cut off 

 by means of the broad knife. Two or three days after it in thus 

 truncated, sweet juice exudes from the cut surface, which is received 

 in an earthen vessel attached to the spath. The liquor issues, drop by 

 drop, and a good healthy blossom will yield from two to four English 

 pint* in twenty-four hours, and continue to afford that quantity for a 

 period extending from three to five weeks. As the coco-nut tree 



blossoms every four or five weeks, two spaths on one tree sometimes 

 yield sweet juice at the same time. The toddy-drawer generally 

 ascends the trees, for the purpose of collecting the sweet juice that 

 has exuded into the toddy pots, both morning and evening, and to cut 

 off a fresh portion of the flowering spath. The toddy is poured from 

 the earthen vessels into the gourd, which is conveyed to the ground by 

 means of a line. The gourd is emptied into a large vessel by a person 

 at the foot of the tree, and drawn up by the toddy -drawer for the 

 purpose of being refilled. 



Arack may be distilled from toddy the same day it is drawn from 

 the tree, but sometimes this operation is delayed until it becomes sour. 

 The process of distillation is carried on in the maritime provinces in 

 copper stills, but in the interior of the island earthen vessels are chiefly 

 employed. 1 Toddy yields by distillation about one-eighth part of proof - 

 spirit. 



On the peninsula of India, arack is distilled from the flowers of the 

 Basiia lonyifolia, Tell mee (Cingalese), the tl&kwah-teee, and the Batata 

 latlfulla. Mahwah-arack may be procured at the rate of an English 

 pint for less than one penny. 



Arack is prepared in the island of Java, where it is known by the 

 name of kneip, from a mixture of molasses, palm-wine, and rice. The 

 rice is first boiled, and after being cooled, a quantity of yeast is added 

 to it and pressed into baskets. Each basket is placed over a tub for 

 about eight days, during which time a quantity of fluid passes through 

 the basket into the tub ; this fluid is added to the molasses and toddy 

 in large fermenting vats, where the mixture is allowed to remain until 

 it is fit for distillation. 



In most parts of Turkey, arack (rati) is made from the skins of 

 grapes. It is flavoured with aniseed, and sometimes contains a solution 

 of gum-mastic. The mountain Tartars distil it from sloes, elder berries, 

 wild grapes, plums, &c., and the Calmuck Tartars distil it from milk. 

 The chief markets for arack are the East India Presidencies, to which 

 a large quantity is supplied by Ceylon. In Europe Amsterdam is the 

 chief place of importation, principally if not entirely from Batavia. 



AR^EO-METER. [HYDROMETER.] 



AR^EOSTYLE (from ipai&s, rare or fete, and arv\os, a column), a 

 term used by writers on architecture, who follow the system of 

 Vitruvius, for one of his " five species of temples." As the term 

 itself imports, it refers rather to the arrangement of columns than to 

 the composition or structure of a temple. The kind of temple called 

 arseostyle is, according to Vitruvius, that in which " the columns are 

 placed more distant from each other than in fact they ought to be." 

 This, the commentators upon that writer say, is when the space 

 between columns, or the intercolumniation, is from four to five 

 diameters. The araeostyle intercolumniation is generally assigned by 

 the same authorities to what in the Vitruvian system is called the 

 Tuscan order ; for as the remains of the more classical architectural 

 works of the Greeks and Romans, on which the system profeno to be 

 based, exhibit no examples of either the arseostyle intercolumniation, 

 or of the Tuscan order of columns, each could with safety be assigned 

 to the other. [TEMPLE.] 



AR^EOSYSTYLE. This term is compounded of arao and iyntyle, 

 and was formed to designate an arrangement of columns not mentioned 

 by Vitruvius. The French architect, Perrault, is understood to have 

 introduced the term arseosystyle to designate an alternately very wide 

 and very narrow intercolumniation, or what is familiarly called coupled 

 columns. This arrangement is alternately ara'atyle columns too far 

 apart ; and tnjttyle columns too close together. Perrault's front of 

 the palace of the Louvre in Paris, the western portico of St. Paul's 

 cathedral, the porticoes, pavilions, and colonnades of Buckingham 

 palace, and many other edifices in London, exemplify the mode 

 of arranging columns which the term artcosystyle designates. 



ARAM-iEAN or ARAMAIC LANGUAGE (CH$ pt&b, or JTfriN, 

 from the unusual root D~IN[ which is related to the cognate forms 

 O=n. DO"}, Qnn, U?y. tn. to be %fc, or he was elevated"), literally 

 means the Highland dialect, in contradistinction to 7?33 P^7' tne 

 language of Canaan, or the Lowland dialect. The Aramaean was thus 

 denominated because those parts of Aram which bordered upon 

 Palestine were higher than the territory of the Jews, and especially 

 higher than the coast of the Mediterranean Sea inhabited by the 

 Canaaultes. Thus a designation became current which was improperly 

 applied to the whole of Aram, many parts of which had a lower level 

 than Canaan, but passed under the general appellation of Highlands, 

 because Aram bordered by Mount Lebanon upon Palestine, and 

 had a higher level in all points of immediate contact. Aramaic is 

 spoken near Mardin and Mosul (see Niebuhr's ' Reisebeschreibung 

 nach Arabien," t. ii. p. 352; and its French translation of 1780, t. ii. 

 p. 275), where it is asserted that the Syriac is also spoken in several 

 villages of the government of Damascus. Niebuhr calls the Christian 

 idiom Chaldee. The Christians of Mardin and Mosul write even the 

 Arabic in Chaldee characters, and the Maronites in Syriac letters. W. 

 G. Brown mentions in his travels that the Syriac is spoken at Malala 

 and Wara. Compare the ' Journal of fa Residence at Bagdad,' by 

 Anthony Groves, 8vo, London, 1832. It is also said to be spoken in 

 some of the dales of the mountains of Kurdistan. The Aramaean is, 

 on the whole, the poorest and the least refined of all the Semitic 



