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48 



AL 



AIEXAN'DRIN A, the bay-tree or laurel of 

 Alexandria: is so called from the place 

 of its growth. 



ALEXAN'DRINE, \ An epithet applied to 



ALEXAN'DRIAN, |a kind of verse, con- 

 sisting of 12 and 13 syllables alternately ; 

 so called from a poem, in French, on the 

 life of Alexander the Great. The French 

 tragedies are generally composed of Alex- 

 andrines. 



ALEXIPHAR'MIC, from X|ai, to expel, 

 and <*a$/Mx,zi>v, poison. Antidotal : that 

 has the power of expelling poison or in- 

 fection by fortifying the system against it. 



ALOA, a sea- weed. Alga (plural of alga) 

 is the name of one of the seven families, 

 or natural tribes, into which the whole 

 vegetable kingdom is divided by Lin- 

 naeus, who defines them as plants, the 

 roots, leaves, and stems of which are all 

 in one. Under this description are com- 

 prehended all the sea-weeds (plants which 

 grow in salt- water), and such fresh- water 

 plants (CONFERVA) as vegetate exclusively 

 under water. The algas form the third 

 order, the class cryptogamia. 



ALGARO'BA, the name of a tree found in 

 the southern parts of Europe and in some 

 parts of Asia, especially Palestine. Its 

 pods are filled with a sweetish powder, 

 which is supposed to have been the locusts 

 on which St. John fed in the wilderness. 

 Name, from Arabic, al, the, and garoba, 

 a bean- tree. 



AL'GAROTH. "When chloride of antimony 

 (butter of antimony; is poured into water, 

 the metallic oxide is precipitated in the 

 form of a white powder, which is powder 

 ofAlgaroth : it is, therefore, a subchloride 

 of antimony. It acts as a violent emetic, 

 and takes its name from Victor Algarotti, 

 a physician of Verona. 



ALGEBRA, the science of quantity in 

 general or universal arithmetic : it treats 

 of the method of representing magnitudes 

 and their relations to one another in 

 general terms, by means of symbols and 

 signs respectively ; and by such method 

 of representation, it comprises all parti- 

 cular cases of quantities, and their con- 

 nection with each other, in general lan- 

 guage, dependent upon the nature of the 

 questions in which they are involved. 

 The symbols employed are the letters of 

 the alphabet, and the signs are, + for 

 addition; , for subtraction; =, for 

 equality, and >, for inequality; X , is 

 sometimes used for multiplication; and 

 -;, for division : but the use of these signs 

 is generally evaded by more concise modes 

 of denoting the operations for which they 

 stand. 



" Algebra is the European corruption 



of an Arabic phrase, which may be 



thus written al jebre al makabalah, 



meaning rentot -ition and reduction. The 



earliest work on the subject is that of 

 Diophantus, a Greek of Alexandria, 

 who lived between A.D. loo and A.D. 400, 

 but when cannot be well settled, nor 

 whether he invented the science himself 

 or borrowed it from some eastern work. 

 It was brought among the Mahometans 

 by Mohammed ben Musa (Mahomet, 

 the son of Moses), bet ween A.D. 800 and 

 A.D. 850 ; and was certainly dtrived by 

 him from the Hindoos. The earliest 

 work which has been found among the 

 latter nation, is called the Vya Genita, 

 written in the Sanscrit language, about 

 A.D. 1150. It was introduced into Italy, 

 from the Arabic work of Mohammed, 

 just mentioned, about the beginning of 

 the 13th century, by Leonardo Ronacci, 

 called Leonard of Pisa ; and into Eng- 

 land by a physician, named Robert 

 Recorde, in a book called the Whetstone 

 of Witte, published in the reign of 

 Queen Mary, in 1557." Augustus De 

 Morgan. 



ALGEBRA'IC, 1 Pertaining to algebra ; 

 AI.GEBRA'ICAL, /containing an opera- 

 tion of algebra, or deduced from such an 

 operation. Thus an algebraic curve is 

 one of which the relation between the 

 abscissa and ordinates is expressed by an 

 equation which contains only algebraic 

 quantities : in contradistinction to a 

 transcedental curve, in which the relation 

 is expressed in infinite series. See also 

 EQUATION and QUANTITY. 



AL'GENEB, a star of the second magni- 

 tude, on the right shoulder of Perseus. 



AL'GOL, a star of the third magnitude, 

 called Medusa's head, in Perseus. 



AI/GORAB, a star of the third magni- 

 tude on the right wing of Corvus. 



AL'GUAZIL, an officer in Spain, corre- 

 ponding to the bailiff in England. 



ALHA'GE^E, a tribe of plants in the natural 

 system ; type alhagi. 



ALHA'GI, the prickly hedysarum ; a 

 shrub of the Levant. Name altered from 

 the Arabic name Algid or Aghul. 



ALIAS the Latin word for otherwise: a 

 term used in judicial proceedings to con- 

 nect the different names by which a 

 person is called, who has assumed ficti- 

 tious ones. Alias is also the name of a 



second writ, issued when the first has 

 failed to enforce the judgment, as an alias 

 capias, &c. 



ALIBI, the Latin word for elsewhere; a 

 law term used where a person charged 

 with an offence, pleads that he could not 

 have committed it, because he was at the 

 time elsewhere. The part of a plea which 

 avers the party to have been elsewhere, 

 is also called an alibi. 



ALICO'NEDA, a large tree found in Congo, 

 from the bark of which a kind of flax is 

 manufactured. 

 AL'IDADB, an Arabic name for the index 



