ASS 
•aagulum, which is oxide of platina. The 
above effects of nitrous acid will therefore 
detect an alloy of silver and platina. 
ASSETS, are goods or property in the 
hands of a person with which he is enabled 
to discharge an obligation imposed upon 
him by another ; they may be either real or 
personal. Where a person holds lands in 
fee-simple, and dies seized thereof, those 
lands, when they come to the heir, are 
called assets. So far as obligations are 
left on the part of the deceased to be ful- 
filled, they are called assets real. When 
such assets fall into the management of 
executors, they are called assets inter- 
maines. When the property left consists of 
goods, money, or personal property, they 
are called assets personal. 
ASSIENTO, a Spanish word, signifying a 
farm, in commerce, is used for a bargain 
between the king of Spain and other pow- 
ers, for importing negroes into the Spanish 
dominions, in America, and particularly in 
Buenos Ayres. The first assiento was made 
by the French Guinea Company ; and, by 
the treaty of Utrecht, transferred to the 
English, who were to furnish four thousand 
eight hundred negroes annually. 
ASSIGN, in common law, a person to 
whom a thing is assigned or made over. 
ASSIGNEE, in law, a person appointed 
by another to do an act, transact some 
business, or enjoy a particular commodity. 
Assignees may be by deed or by law; by 
deed, where the lessee of a farm assigns the 
same to another ; by law, where the law 
makes an assignee, without any appoint- 
ment of the person entitled, as an executor 
is assignee in law to the testator, and an ad- 
ministrator to an intestate. But when 
there is assignee by deed, the assignee in 
law is not allowed. 
ASSIGNING, in a general sense, is the 
setting over a right to another; and in a 
special sense is used to set forth and point 
at, as to assign an error, to assign false 
judgment, to assign waste ; in which cases 
it must be shewn wherein the error is 
committed, where and how the judgment 
is unjust, and where the waste is commit- 
ted. 
ASSIGNMENT, is a transfer, or making 
over to another, of the right one has in any 
estate ; but it is usually applied to an estate 
for life or years. And it differs in a lease 
only in this ; that by a lease one grants an 
interest less than his own, reserving to him- 
self a reversion; in assignment he parts 
with the whole property, and the assignee 
ASS 
stands to all intents and purposes in the 
place of the assignor. 2 Black. 326. 
Assignment, in a military sense, signifies 
a public document, hy which colonels of re- 
giments become entitled to certain allow* 
ances for the clothing of their several corps. 
ASSIMILATION, in animal economy, is 
that process by which the different ingredi- 
ents of the blood are made parts of the va- 
rious organs of the body. Over the nature 
of assimilation, says Dr. Thomson, the 
thickest darkness hangs, there is no key to 
explain it, nothing to lead us to the know- 
ledge of the instruments employed. Facts, 
however, put the existence of the process 
beyond the reach of doubt. The healing 
of every fractured bone, and of every 
wound of the body, is a proof of its exist- 
ence, and an instance of its action. 
Every organ employed in assimilation has a 
peculiar office, arid it always performs this 
office whenever it has materials to act upon, 
even when the performance of it is contrary 
to the interest of the animal. Thus the 
stomach always converts the food into 
chyme, even when the food is of such a na- 
ture that the process of digestion is retarded 
rather than promoted by the change. If 
warm milk be taken into the stomach, it is 
decomposed by that organ, and converted 
into chyme, yet the milk was more nearly 
assimilated to the animal before the action 
of tiie stomach, than after it. The same 
thing occurs when we eat animal food. If 
a substance be introduced into an organ 
employed in assimilation, that has already 
undergone the change which that organ is 
fitted to produce, it is not acted upon by 
that organ, but passes on unaltered to the 
next assimilating organ. Thus it is the of- 
fice of the intestines to convert chyme into 
chyle ; and whenever chyme is introduced 
into the intestines, they perform their office, 
and produce the usual change ; but if chyle 
itself be introduced, it is absorbed by the 
Iacteals without alteration. Again, the bu r 
siness of the blood-vessels, as assimilating 
organs, is to convert chyle into blood ; chyle 
therefore cannot be introduced into the ar- 
teries without undergoing that change ; but 
blood may be introduced from another ani- 
mal without any injury, and consequently 
without undergoing any change. Though 
the different assimilating organs have the 
power of changing certain substances into 
others, and of throwing out the useless in- 
gredients, yet this power is not absolute, 
even when the substances on which they act 
are proper for undergoing the change which. 
