This is a history of Spain from the earliest times down to 1456, and was printed at Granada in 1545, and also in the Rerum Hispanicarum Scriptores aliquot, by R. Bel (Frankfort, 1579). Alphonsus died on the 12th of July 1456.
ALPINI, PROSPERO (Prosper Alpinus), 1553–1617, Italian physician and botanist, was born at Marostica, in the republic of Venice, on the 23rd of November 1553. In his youth he served for a time in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he went to study medicine at Padua. After taking his doctor’s degree in 1578, he settled as a physician in Campo San Pietro, a small town in the Paduan territory. But his tastes were botanical, and to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo or Hemi, the Venetian consul in Cairo. In Egypt he spent three years, and from a practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of the Linnaean system. He says that “the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers.” On his return, he resided for some time at Genoa as physician to Andrea Doria, and in 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua, where he died on the 6th of February 1617. He was succeeded in the botanical chair by his son Alpino Alpini (d. 1637). His best-known work is De Plantis Aegypti liber (Venice, 1592). His De Medicina Egyptiorum (Venice, 1591) is said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe. The genus Alpinia, belonging to the order Zingiberaceae, was named after him by Linnaeus.
ALPS, the collective name for one of the great mountain systems of Europe.
1. Position and Name.—The continent of Europe is no more than a great peninsula extending westwards from the much vaster continent of Asia, while it is itself broken up by two inland seas into several smaller peninsulas—the Mediterranean forming the Iberian, the Italian and the Greek peninsulas, while the Baltic forms that of Scandinavia and the much smaller one of Denmark. Save the last-named, all these peninsulas of Europe are essentially mountain ranges. But in height and importance the ranges that rise therein are much surpassed by a great mountain-chain, stretching from south-eastern France to the borders of Hungary, as well as between the plains of northern Italy and of southern Germany. This chain is collectively known as the Alps, and is the most important physical feature of the European continent. The Alps, however, do not present so continuous a barrier as the Himalayas, the Andes or even the Pyrenees. They are formed of numerous ranges, divided by comparatively deep valleys, which, with many local exceptions, tend towards parallelism with the general direction of the whole mass. This, between the Dauphiné and the borders of Hungary, forms a broad band convex towards the north, while most of the valleys lie between the directions west to east and south-west to north-east. But in many parts deep transverse valleys intersect the prevailing direction of the ridges, and facilitate the passage of man, plants and animals, as well as of currents of air which mitigate the contrast that would otherwise be found between the climates of the opposite slopes.
The derivation of the name Alps is still very uncertain, some writers connecting it with a Celtic root alb, said to mean height, while others suggest the Latin adjective albus (white), referring to the colour of the snowy peaks. But in all parts of the great chain itself, the term Alp (or Alm in the Eastern Alps) is exclusively applied to the high mountain pastures (see Alp), and not to the peaks and ridges of the chain.
2. Limits.—These will depend on the meaning we attach to the word Alps as referring to the great mountain-chain of central Europe. If we merely desire to distinguish it from certain minor ranges (e.g. the Cévennes, the Jura, the hills of central Germany, the Carpathians, the Apennines), which are really independent ranges rather than offshoots of the main chain, the best limits are on the west (strictly speaking south), the Col d’Altare or di Cadibona (1624 ft.), leading from Turin to Savona and Genoa, and on the east the line of the railway over the Semmering Pass (3215 ft.) from Vienna to Marburg in the Mur valley, and on by Laibach to Trieste. But if we confine the meaning of the term Alps to those parts of the chain that are what is commonly called “Alpine,” where the height is sufficient to support a considerable mass of perpetual snow, our boundaries to the west and to the east must be placed at spots other than those mentioned above. To the west the limit will then be the Col de Tenda (6145 ft.), leading from Cuneo (Coni) to Ventimiglia, while on the east our line will be the route over the Radstädter Tauern (5702 ft.) and the Katschberg (5384 ft.) from Salzburg to Villach in Carinthia, and thence by Klagenfurt to Marburg and so past Laibach in Carniola on to Trieste; from Villach the direct route to Trieste would be over the Predil Pass (3813 ft.) or the Pontebba or Saifnitz Pass (2615 ft.), more to the west, but in either case this would exclude the Terglou (9400 ft.), the highest summit of the entire South-Eastern Alps, as well as its lower neighbours.
On the northern side the Alps (in whichever sense we take this term) are definitely bounded by the course of the Rhine from Basel to the Lake of Constance, the plain of Bavaria, and the low region of foot-hills that extend from Salzburg to the neighbourhood of Vienna. One result of this limit, marked out by Nature herself, is that the waters which flow down the northern slope of the Alps find their way either into the North Sea through the Rhine, or into the Black Sea by means of the Danube, not a drop reaching the Baltic Sea. On the southern side the mountains extending from near Turin to near Trieste subside into the great plain of Piedmont, Lombardy and Venetia. But what properly forms the western bit of the Alps runs, from near Turin to the Col de Tenda, in a southerly direction, then bending eastwards to the Col d’Altare that divides it from the Apennines.
It should be borne in mind that the limits adopted above refer purely to the topographical aspect of the Alps as they exist at the present day. Naturalists will of course prefer other limits according as they are geologists, botanists or zoologists.
3. Climate.—It is well known that as we rise from the sea-level into the upper regions of the atmosphere the temperature decreases. The effect of mountain-chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of heat, often accompanied by the precipitation of moisture in the form of snow or rain. The position of the Alps about the centre of the European continent has profoundly modified the climate of all the surrounding regions. The accumulation of vast masses of snow, which have gradually been converted into permanent glaciers, maintains a gradation of very different climates within the narrow space that intervenes between the foot of the mountains and their upper ridges; it cools the breezes that are wafted to the plains on either side, but its most important function is to regulate the water-supply of that large region which is traversed by the streams of the Alps. Nearly all the moisture that is precipitated during six or seven months is stored up in the form of snow, and is gradually diffused in the course of the succeeding summer; even in the hottest and driest seasons the reserves accumulated during a long preceding period of years in the form of glaciers are available to maintain the regular flow of the greater streams. Nor is this all; the lakes that fill several of the main valleys on the southern side of the Alps are somewhat above the level of the plains of Lombardy and Venetia, and afford an inexhaustible supply of water, which, from a remote period, has been used for that system of irrigation to which they owe their proverbial fertility. Six regions or zones, which are best distinguished by their characteristic vegetation, are found in the Alps. It is an error to suppose that these are indicated by absolute height above the sea-level. Local conditions of exposure to the sun, protection from cold winds, or the reverse, are of primary importance in determining the climate and the corresponding vegetation.
