the Omayyad caliph of that name, and again in 840 by the Caliph Mutasim. There are, also, a ruined castle founded by Harun al-Rashid in 782, fine fountains, good buildings, river-side quays, cotton mills and an American mission with church and schools. Adana, which retains its ancient name, rose to importance as a station on the Roman military road to the East, and was at one time a rival of Tarsus. The town was largely rebuilt by Mansur in 758, and during subsequent centuries it often changed hands and suffered many vicissitudes. Its position, commanding the passage of the mountains to the north of Syria, rendered it important as a military station in the contest between the Egyptians and the Turks in 1832. After the defeat of the Turkish army at Konia it was granted to Ibrahim Pasha, and though the firman announcing his appointment named him only muhassil, or collector of the crown revenue, it continued to be held by the Egyptians till the treaty of July 1840 restored it to the Porte. The chief productions of the province are cotton, corn, sesame and wool, which are largely exported. The population of the town is greatly mixed, and, having a large element of nomads in it, varies much from time to time. At its maximum it reaches nearly 50,000. (D. G. H.)
ADANSON, MICHEL (1727–1806), French naturalist, of Scottish descent, was born on the 7th of April 1727, at Aix, in Provence. After leaving the Collège Sainte Barbe in Paris, he was employed in the cabinets of R. A. F. Réaumur and Bernard de Jussieu, as well as in the Jardin des Plantes. At the end of 1748 he left France on an exploring expedition to Senegal, which from the unhealthiness of its climate was a terra incognita to naturalists. His ardour remained unabated during the five years of his residence in Africa. He collected and described, in greater or less detail, an immense number of animals and plants; collected specimens of every object of commerce; delineated maps of the country; made systematic meteorological and astronomical observations; and prepared grammars and dictionaries of the languages spoken on the banks of the Senegal. After his return to Paris in 1754 he made use of a small portion of the materials he had collected in his Histoire naturelle du Sénégal (Paris, 1757). This work has a special interest from the essay on shells, printed at the end of it, where Adanson proposed his universal method, a system of classification distinct from those of Buffon and Linnaeus. He founded his classification of all organized beings on the consideration of each individual organ. As each organ gave birth to new relations, so he established a corresponding number of arbitrary arrangements. Those beings possessing the greatest number of similar organs were referred to one great division, and the relationship was considered more remote in proportion to the dissimilarity of organs. In 1763 he published his Familles naturelles des plantes. In this work he developed the principle of arrangement above mentioned, which, in its adherence to natural botanical relations, was based on the system of J. P. Tournefort, and had been anticipated to some extent nearly a century before by John Ray. The success of this work was hindered by its innovations in the use of terms, which were ridiculed by the defenders of the popular sexual system of Linnaeus; but it did much to open the way for the establishment, by means principally of A. L. de Jussieu’s Genera Plantarum (1789), of the natural method of the classification of plants. In 1774 Adanson submitted to the consideration of the Academy of Sciences an immense work, extending to all known beings and substances. It consisted of 27 large volumes of manuscript, employed in displaying the general relations of all these matters, and their distribution; 150 volumes more, occupied with the alphabetical arrangement of 40,000 species; a vocabulary, containing 200,000 words, with their explanations; and a number of detached memoirs, 40,000 figures and 30,000 specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. The committee to which the inspection of this enormous mass was entrusted strongly recommended Adanson to separate and publish all that was peculiarly his own, leaving out what was merely compilation. He obstinately rejected this advice; and the huge work, at which he continued to labour, was never published. He had been elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1759, and he latterly subsisted on a small pension it had conferred on him. Of this he was deprived in the dissolution of the Academy by the Constituent Assembly, and was consequently reduced to such a depth of poverty as to be unable to appear before the French Institute when it invited him to take his place among its members. Afterwards he was granted a pension sufficient to relieve his simple wants. He died at Paris after months of severe suffering, on the 3rd of August 1806, requesting, as the only decoration of his grave, a garland of flowers gathered from the fifty-eight families he had differentiated—“a touching though transitory image,” says Cuvier, “of the more durable monument which he has erected to himself in his works.” Besides the books already mentioned he published papers on the ship-worm, the baobab tree, the Adansonia digitata of Linnaeus, the origin of the varieties of cultivated plants, and gum-producing trees.
ADAPTATION (from Lat. adaptare, to fit to), a process of fitting, or modifying, a thing to other uses, and so altering its form or original purpose. In literature there may be, e.g., an adaptation of a novel for a drama, or in music an arrangement of a piece for two hands into one for four, &c. In biology, according to the doctrine of evolution, adaptation plays a prominent part as the process by which an organism or species of organisms becomes modified to suit the conditions of its life. Every change in a living organism involves adaptation; for in all cases life consists in a continuous adjustment of internal to external relations. Every living organism reacts to its environment; if the reaction is unfavourable, disability leading to ultimate extinction is the result. If the reaction is favourable, its result is called an adaptation. How far such adaptations are produced afresh in each generation, whether or no their effects are transmitted to descendants and so directly modify the stock, to what extent adaptations characteristic of a species or variety have come about by selection of individuals capable, in each generation, of responding favourably, or how far by the selection of individuals fortuitously suitable to the environment, or, how far, possibly by the inheritance of the responses to the environment, are problems of biology not yet definitely solved.
ADDA (anc. Addua), a river of North Italy. Its true source is in some small lakes near the head of the Fraële glen, but its volume is increased by the union with several smaller streams, near the town of Bormio, at the Raetian Alps. Thence it flows first S.W., then due W., through the fertile Valtellina (q.v.), passing Tirano, where the Poschiavino falls in on the right, and Sondrio, where is the junction with the Malero, right. It falls into the Lake of Como, at its northern end, and mainly forms that lake. On issuing from its south-eastern or Lecco arm, it crosses the plain of Lombardy, and finally, after a course of about 150 m., joins the Po, 8 m. above Cremona. The lower course of the Adda was formerly the boundary between the territories of Venice and of Milan; and on its banks several important battles have been fought, notably that of Lodi, where Napoleon defeated the Austrians in 1796.
(W. A. B. C.)
ADDAMS, JANE (1860–), American sociologist, was born at Cedarville, Illinois, on the 6th of September 1860. After graduating at Rockford (Illinois) Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in 1881, she spent several years in the study of economic and sociological questions in both Europe and America, and in 1889 with Miss Ellen Gates Starr established in Chicago, Illinois, the social settlement known as Hull House, of which she became the head-worker. The success of this settlement, which became a great factor for good in the city, was principally due to Miss Addams’s rare executive skill and practical common-sense methods. Her personal participation in the life of the community is exemplified in her acceptance of the office of inspector of streets and alleys under the municipal government. She became widely known as a lecturer and writer on social problems and published Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), and The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909).
ADDAX, a genus of antelopes, with one species (A. nasomaculatus) from North Africa and Arabia. It is a little over 3 ft. high, yellowish white in colour, with a brown mane and a fringe of the same hue on the throat. Both sexes carry horns,
