AHI 



ARI 



ARGYTHAMNIA, in botany, a genus 

 of plants of the Monoecia Tetrandria class 

 and order. Essen, char, mule calyx four- 

 leaved ; petals four : female calyx five- 

 leaved ; no corol ; three styles forked ; 

 capsule three celled : seeds solitary. 

 There is but a single species, a shrub, 

 found in 'Jamaica, with a whitish bark; 

 leaves oval ; flowers axillary, on very 

 short peduncles. 



ARIANS, a denomination of Christians 

 that take their name from Arius, a pres- 

 byter of Alexandria, who flourished in the 

 year 315. The propagation of this doc- 

 trine was the occasion of the celebrated 

 council of Nice by Constantine, in the 

 year 325. Arius acknowle^ed Christ to 

 be God in a subordinate sense, and con- 

 sidered his death to be a propitiation for 

 sin The Arians acknowledge, that the 

 Son was the word, though they deny its 

 being eternal, contending only that it had 

 been created prior to all other beings. 

 They maintain that Christ is not the eter- 

 nal God ; but, in opposition to the Uni- 

 tarians, they contend for his pre-exist- 

 ence, a doctrine which they found on 

 various passages of scripture, particularly 

 these two, " before Abraham was I am ;" 

 and "glorify me with the glory which I 

 had with thee before the world was." 

 Arians differ among themselves as to the 

 extent of the doctrine. Some of them be- 

 lieve Christ to have been the Creator of 

 the world, and on that account has a claim 

 to religious worship ; others admit of his 

 pre-existence simply. Hence the appel- 

 lations high and low Arians. Dr. Clarke, 

 Rector of St. James, in his " Scripture 

 Doctrine of the Trinity ;" Mr. Henry 

 Taylor, Vicar of Portsmouth, in a work 

 entitled " Ben Mordicai's Apology;" 

 Mr. Tomkins, in his " Mediator ;" and 

 Mr. Hopkins, in his " Appeal to the Com- 

 mon Sense of all Christian People;" have 

 been deemed among the most able advo- 

 cates of Arianism. Dr. Price has been 

 one of the last writers in behalf of this 

 doctrine : in his sermons " On the Chris- 

 tian Doctrine" will be found an able de- 

 fence of low Arianism. See also a tract 

 published in 1805, by Basanistes. 



ARIES, in astronomy, a constellation of 

 fixed stars, drawn on the globe in the 

 figure of a ram. It is the first of the 

 twelve signs of the zodiac, from which a 

 twelfth part of the ecliptic takes its de- 

 nomination. It is marked thus ^Y 3 , and 

 cons.sts of sixty-six stars. 



AR1SH, a long measure used in Persia, 

 containing 3197 English feet. 



ARISTA, among botanists, u long 



needle-like beard, which stands out from 

 the husk of a grain of corn, grass, &c. 



ARISTARCIIUS, in biography, a cele- 

 brated Greek philosopher and astrono- 

 mer, and a native of the city of Samos; 

 but at what period he flourished is not 

 certain. It must have been before the 

 time of Archimedes, as some parts of his 

 writings and opinions are cited by that 

 author. He held the doctrine of Pytha- 

 goras as to the system of the world, but 

 whether he lived before or after him is 

 not known. lie maintained that the sun 

 and stars were fixed in the heavens, and 

 that the earth moved in a circle about 

 the sun, at the same time that it revolved 

 about its o\vn axis. He determined, that 

 the annual orbit of the earth, compared 

 with the distance of the fixed stars, is but 

 as a point. For these his opinions, which 

 time has proved to be undeniably true, 

 he was censured by his contemporaries, 

 some of whom went about to prove that 

 Greece ought to have punished Aris- 

 tarchus for his heresy. This philosopher 

 invented a peculiar kind of sun-dial, men- 

 tioned by Vitruvius. There is now extant 

 only a treatise upon the magnitude and 

 distance of the sun and moon, which was 

 translated into the Latin, and comment- 

 ed upon by Commandine, who published 

 it, with Pappus's explanations, in 1572. 



AR1STEA, in botany, a genus of plants 

 of the Triandria Monogynia class and or- 

 der. Petals six; style declined: stigma 

 funnel form, gaping; capsule inferior, 

 many -seeded. There is but one species : 

 a Cape plant ; low ; leaves veined and 

 narrow ; flowers in downy heads. 



ARISTIDA, in botany, a genus of the 

 Triandria Digynia class of plants, the ca- 

 lyx of which is a bivalve tubulated glume, 

 of the length of the corolla ; the corolla 

 is a glume of one valve, opening longi- 

 tudinally, hairy at the base, and terminat- 

 ed by three sub-equal patulous aristae ; 

 the fruit is a connivent glume, contain- 

 ing a naked filiform single seed, of the 

 length of the corolla. There are ten 

 species. 



ARISTOCRACY, a form of government, 

 where the supreme power is vested in 

 the principal persons of the state, either 

 on account of their nobility, or their ca- 

 pacity and probity. 



Aristocracies, says Archdeacon Paley, 

 are of two kinds; first, where the power 

 of the nobility belongs to them in their 

 collective capacity alone ; that is, where, 

 although the government reside in an as- 

 sembly of the order, yet the members of 

 the assembly, separately and individually, 

 possess no authority or privilege beyond 



