ADliRSHACH MOUNTAINS -ADJUTANT-GENERAL, 



clergyman. He received his fir>l iiNtruclion partly 

 in Anklain, partly at Klosterl>ergen, near Magde- 

 burg, and fini-hed his education nt Ilallt>. In 1759, 

 lit- wns appointed professor in the protestant academy 

 at Krfurt ; but, two years after, ecclesiastical disputes 

 iMii-cd him to remove to Leipsic, where he applied 

 himself, with indefatigable activity, to the extensive 

 works by which he lias been so useful to the Ger- 

 man language and literature, particularly his Gram- 

 matitch-krit. IVorterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart. 

 I.eip-ic, 1774 86, 4 vols. and 1st half of the fifth. 

 In 1787, he received, from the then elector of Sax- 

 ony, the place of first librarian of the public library 

 in Dresden. This office he held till his death, Sept. 

 10, 1806. His grammatical, critical dictionary, sur- 

 passes Uie English lexicon of Johnson in the accuracy 

 and order of the definitions, and more especially in 

 the department of etymology, but is inferior to it in 

 the selection of classic authorities, because his pre- 

 dilection for the Upper Saxon, or Misnian authors, 

 induced him to neglect those writers whose country 

 or style he disliked, and his taste was so limited, that 

 he would not allow of any deviation from the estab- 

 lished forms and settled laws of style. His methodi- 

 cal mind was struck with terror at the irregularities 

 and the flood of new words with which he thought 

 the German language menaced, and could not ap- 

 preciate its admirable flexibility and copiousness, in 

 which it is equalled by the Grecian alone. Of his 

 other works, we may mention his German grammar, 

 his Magasin fur die Deutsche Sprache, his work on 

 German style, his .Elteste Geschkhte der Deutschen, 

 his Directorium, important for its exposition of the 

 sources of the history of the south of Saxony, Meis- 

 sen, 1802, 4to, and his Milhridates, in which last 

 work he designed to store up the fruits of all his in- 

 vestigations, but finished only the first volume ; for 

 the three others, we are indebted to the lexicographer 

 Vater, of Halle, who employed for this purpose, part- 

 ly the papers of the deceased, partly the materials 

 collected by A. and W. von Humboldt, and partly 

 the results of his own inquiries. A. was a man of 

 blameless morals and amiable temper. He was never 

 married. He daily devoted 14 hours to labour. 



ADERSBACH MOUOTAINS. These extend, with some 

 interruptions, from Adersbach, a village of Bohemia, 

 to the county of Glatz. Numerous clefts of various 

 size are found among the rocks, which rise in 

 strange forms more than 100 feet high, and consist 

 of a remarkable kind of ferruginous sand-stone. 

 Rain and snow, filling the cavities of the surface 

 during the winter, form collections of water, which 

 gradually niters through the rocks, and produces 

 these clefts. The sand-stone itself has, in the course 

 of time, become very brittle, especially on the sur- 

 face. The place is a great resort for travellers. 



ADHKLM, or ADELM, a learned prelate under the 

 Saxon Heptarchy, was born in Wiltshire, in the sev- 

 enth century. He was made bishop of Shireburn, 

 and extraordinary tales are related 01 his miraculous 

 powers, and his voluntary chastity. He was, for the 

 times, an eminent scholar, being acquainted with 

 Grecian and Roman literature, a good writer, a poet 

 of some merit, and an excellent musician. His works, 

 which were numerous, are mostly lost. 



ADHESION, according to the latest phraseology of 

 physics, means generally the tendency of heteroge- 

 neous bodies to stick together ; but cohesion implies 

 the attraction of homogeneous particles of bodies. 

 Adhesion may take place between two solids, as two 

 hemispheres of glass, or between a solid and a fluid, 

 or between two fluids, as oil and water. Thus it is 

 said that a fluid adheres to a solid, as water to the 

 finger dipped into it But there is a great difference, 

 in this respect, in different bodies ; thus small par- 



ticles of quicksilver do not adhere to glass, but they 

 adhere to gold, silver, and lead. Water adheres to 

 I lie greatest jtart of Ixxlies, unless it is separated 

 fniiii their surface by oily substances, dust, flour, &c. 

 Fluids do not form a surface perfectly horizontal in 

 \essels to which they adhere so as to wet them, but 

 rise, on the contrary, around the brim of the vessels. 

 This is proved by water, beer, K-c., poured into 

 "lasses, pails, pots, &c. Fluids, on the other hand, 

 in vessels to which they do not adhere, sink around 

 the brim, and rise in the centre. Thus quicksilver 

 in a glass forms a convex surface. This phenome- 

 non of the rising and sinking of fluids becomes still 

 more remarkable in vessels of a small diameUr ; 

 wherefore capillary tubes, so called, an- used for 

 performing experiments, and the singular effects 

 produced are ascribed to capillary attraction. (Sen 

 Capillary Tubes.) Water poured from a vessel to 

 which it adheres so as to wet it, runs easily down tho 

 exterior surface, unless a peculiar direction is given 

 to the vessel. This is never the case with quick- 

 silver poured from a glass ; but it is so if poured 

 from a vessel of lead, c. 



ADIAPHORA (Greek) ; things indifferent in them- 

 selves, and of small importance : 1. objects and ac- 

 tions which deserve neither praise nor blame ; /?. in 

 matters of church discipline, customs and rites which 

 may be retained or rejected without injuring belief 

 or troubling conscience, because the holy Scriptures 

 have neither forbidden nor ordained them. This 

 name was originally applied to those instruments and 

 ceremonies of the catholic church, which the pro- 

 testants admitted into their forms of worship, as al- 

 tars, candlesticks, images, mass-vestments, Latin 

 hymns, vespers and orisons, private mass, &c. On 

 account of this admission, Flackius, a theologian of 

 Jena, in connexion with the clergy of Lower Saxony, 

 commenced a controversy, known by Uie name of 

 the adiaphoristic controversy, with Melancthon and 

 the divines of Wittemberg, who received the name 

 of Adiaphorists . The same trifles became subse- 

 quently marks, by which the strict Lutherans were 

 externally distinguished from the Calvinists, who 

 had retained nothing of this kind. The more en- 

 lightened theologians of the 18th century caused the 

 greater part of these external distinctions to be laid 

 aside ; but new importance has been attached to 

 them in our days ; and the question has again been 

 discussed, " what ceremonies belong to the A." 



ADIPOCIRE, from adeps, fat, and cera, wax ; a sub- 

 stance of a light-brown colour, formed by the soft 

 parts of animal bodies, when kept for some time in 

 water, or when preserved from atmospheric air. 

 When this substance is subjected to a chemical ana- 

 lysis, a true ammoniacal soap is first yielded, com- 

 posed of ammonia, a concrete oil, and water. The 

 oil may be obtained pure, and this is called more 

 strictly A. It was discovered on removing the ani- 

 mal matter from the burial ground of the church des 

 Innocens, at Paris, in 1787, amongst the masses of 

 the bodies of the poor there interred together. In 

 this place, about 1500 bodies were thrown together 

 into the same pit, and, being decomposed, were con- 

 verted into this substance. (See Nicholson's Jour- 

 nal, vol. 4, p. 135; Phil. Trans. 1794, vols. 84, 85; 

 Journal de Physique, torn. 38, &c) 



ADJUTANT; in the military art, an officer whose 

 duty is to assist the major. 



ADJUTANT-GENERAL ; an officer of distinction who 

 assists the general. Among the Jesuits, this name 

 was given to a select number of fathers, who resided 

 with the general of the order, and had each a pro- 

 vince or country assigned to him, and their office 

 was to inform the father-general of public occur- 

 rences in such countries. 



