known as the seat of Amherst College, a Congregational institution founded in 1821. The original purpose of the college was to educate young men lor the ministry. There are now 5° instructors and 502 students, with an art gallery, a library of 52,000 volumes,
memorial chapel, gymnasium, observatory and rare museum of Indian relics Nineveh antiquities, minerals and tracks in stone. It has a fine collection of casts from famous statuary, a park of twenty-six acres, with ball and tennis grounds. Near the town is the Massachusetts Agricultural College, considered one of the best agricultural schools in America. Population, 5,112.
Ami (a'mee), Henry M., M.A., D.Sc.,P.G.S. and F. R. S. of Canada, was born at Belle Rivie're, near Montreal, Nov. 23, 1858. He is the son of the late Rev. Marc Ami of Geneva, Switzerland. He was educated in the Ottawa public and grammar schools and at McGill University, where he took high honors, and in 1903 was awarded the Bigsby medal by the Geological society of London, Eng. He has been the paleontologist of the geological survey of Canada since 1882, and is the author of many papers on the paleontology and chronological geology of Canada. His home is in Ottawa, and there he edited the Naturalist, from 1895 to 1900.
Amiens (ä'mē-ăn'), a manufacturing city of Prance, formerly the most important in Picardy. It possesses a venerable and famous cathedral. Population, 93,207. The well-known treaty of Amiens, which ended a war that had lasted ten years, was made by Great Britain with France, Holland and Spain in 1802. England gave up all of its conquests of the war, except Ceylon and Trinidad. France gave up Naples, and Egypt was restored to Turkey. In the Franco-German War, Amiens fell for a time into the hands of the Germans (November 1870), while the latter gained a great victory over the French Army of the Loire.
Am'men, Daniel, was born May 15, 1820, in Ohio, and entered the navy as midshipman in 1836. During the Civil War he took part in the battle of Port Royal, and in the attacks on Fort Fisher and Fort Sumter.
He became commodore and afterward rear-admiral, retiring in 1878. He died July n, 1898.
Am'mon, an Egyptian god, connected by the Greeks and Romans with Zeus or Jupiter. The Egyptians called him Amen, the hidden god, and in the earliest times represented him as a man, but in later times as a ram or a man with a ram's head. He had famous temples in Thebes, Egypt, and on the oasis of Ammon in the Libyan desert and in many other places.
Ammo'ma, a gas (NH3), which is dissolved by water with great avidity, making an alkaline liquid called ammonia-water or, by chemists, ammonium hydroxide, which is the common form in which it is used. The name is probably derived from the temple of Ammon in the Libyan desert, where ammonia was produced. The name hartshorn is also used, because the shavings of horns have been used to prepare it. It is composed of nitrogen and hydrogen, and is obtained chiefly from the waste liquors of the manufactories of illuminating gas. Ammonia gas may be changed to a liquid or solid by cold and pressure. An important use of liquid ammonia is in the manufacture of ice. (See ICE.) Ammonia unites with acids to form ammonium salts. The carbonate is much used for smelling salts, the chloride is used in soldering and in medicine, and the sulphate and other salts are valuable fertilizers.
Amce'ba, one of the lowest microscopic animal organisms, extensively used in laboratory work in biology. The amoeba is a single cell (see CELL DOCTRINE); its body is a mass of protoplasm. Therefore, when we make observations upon it we are observing protoplasm at first hand and can determine its properties and behavior. Within its body all the physiological acts take place in a simplified form. It is, therefore, of unusual interest to biologists, for the physiological processes are so complex in higher animals that one must have them reduced to their simplest expression in order to comprehend them. The soft protoplasm of its body is always moving. It flows into finger-like processes (pseudo-podia), and changes its position from place to place. It also flows about food particles and thereby engulfs them into its substance. The amoeba is found in stagnant water, moist moss, etc. The living substance of its body is contractile, like muscles; irritable, like nervous tissue; receptive, assimilative, respiratory, reproductive, etc.—the germs of activities that are more developed and
