AMOS, SHELDON (1835–1886), English jurist, was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar as a member of the Middle Temple in 1862. In 1869 he was appointed to the chair of jurisprudence in University College, London, and in 1872 became reader under the council of legal education and examiner in constitutional law and history to the university of London. Failing health led to his resignation of those offices, and he took a voyage to the South Seas. He resided for a short time at Sydney, and finally settled in Egypt, where he practised as an advocate. After the bombardment of Alexandria, and the reorganization of the Egyptian judicature, he was appointed judge of the court of appeal, but being without any previous experience of administrative work he found the strain too great for his health. He came to England on leave in the autumn of 1885, and on his return to Egypt he died suddenly at Alexandria on the 3rd of January 1886. His principal publications are: Systematic View of the Science of Jurisprudence (1872); Lectures on International Law (1873); Science of Law (1874); Science of Politics (1883); History and Principles of the Civil Law of Rome as Aid to the Study of Scientific and Comparative Jurisprudence (1883), and numerous pamphlets. His wife, Mrs Sheldon Amos (Sarah Maclardie Bunting), took a prominent part in Liberal Nonconformist politics and in movements connected with the position of women. She died at Cairo on the 21st of January 1908.
AMOY, a city and treaty-port in the province of Fuh-kien, China, situated on the slope of a hill, on the south coast of a small and barren island named Hiamen, in 24° 28′ N. and 118° 10′ E. It is a large and exceedingly dirty place, about 9 m. in circumference, and is divided into two portions, an inner and an outer town, which are separated from each other by a ridge of hills, on which a citadel of considerable strength has been built. Each of these divisions of the city possesses a large and commodious harbour, that of the inner town, or city proper, being protected by strong fortifications. There are dry-docks and an excellent anchorage. Amoy may be regarded as the port of the inland city of Chang-chow, with which it has river communication, and its trade, both foreign and coastwise, is extensive and valuable. The chief articles imported are sugar, rice, raw cotton and opium, as well as cotton cloths, iron goods and other European manufactures. The chief exports are tea, porcelain and paper. The trade carried on by means of Chinese junks is said to be large, and the native merchants are considered to be among the wealthiest and most enterprising in China. By other vessels the trade in 1870 was:—imports, £1,915,427; exports, £1,440,000. In 1904 the figures were:—imports, £2,081,494; exports, £384,494. The falling off of exports is due to the decreased demand for China tea, for which Amoy was one of the chief centres. The native population is now estimated at 300,000, and the foreign residents number about 280. A large part of the trade is that carried on with the neighbouring Japanese island of Formosa. The province of Fuh-kien is claimed by the Japanese as their particular sphere of influence. Amoy was captured by the British in 1841, after a determined resistance, and is one of the five ports that were opened to British commerce by the treaty of 1842; it is now open to the ships of all nations.
AMPELIUS, LUCIUS, possibly a tutor or schoolmaster, and author of an extremely concise summary—a kind of index—of universal history (Liber Memorialis) from the earliest times to the reign of Trajan. Its object and scope are sufficiently indicated in the dedication to a certain Macrinus: “Since you desire to know everything, I have written this ‘book of notes,’ that you may learn of what the universe and its elements consist, what the world contains, and what the human race has done.” It seems to have been intended as a text-book to be learnt by heart. The little work, in fifty chapters, gives a sketch of cosmography, geography, mythology (chaps. i.–x.), and history (chap. x.–end). The historical portion, dealing mainly with the republican period, is untrustworthy, and the text in many places corrupt; the earlier chapters are more valuable, and contain some interesting information. In chap. viii. (Miracula Mundi) occurs the only reference in an ancient writer to the famous sculptures of Pergamum, discovered in 1871, excavated in 1878 and now at Berlin: “At Pergamum there is a great marble altar, 40 ft. high, with colossal sculptures, representing a battle of the giants.” Nothing is known of the author or of the date at which he lived: the times of Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, the beginning of the 3rd century, and the age of Diocletian and Constantine have all been suggested. The Macrinus to whom the work is dedicated may have been the emperor, who reigned 217–218, but the name is not uncommon, and it seems more likely that he was a young man with a thirst for universal knowledge, which the Liber Memorialis was compiled to satisfy.
There is no English edition or translation. The first edition of Ampelius was published in 1638 by Salmasius (Saumaise) from the Dijon MS., now lost, together with the Epitome of Florus; the latest edition is by Wölfflin (1854), based on Salmasius’s copy of the lost codex.
See Gläser, Rheinisches Museum, ii. (1843); Zink, Eos, ii. (1866); Wölfflin, De L. Ampelii Libro Memoriali (1854).
AMPELOPSIS (from Gr. ἄμπελος, vine, and ὄψις, appearance, as it resembles the grape-vine in habit), a genus of the vine order Ampelideae and nearly allied to the grape-vine. The plants are rapidly-growing, hardy, ornamental climbers, which flourish in common garden soil, and are readily propagated by cuttings. They climb by means of tendrils. A. quinquefolia, Virginian creeper, a native of North America, introduced to Europe early in the 17th century, has palmately compound leaves with three to five leaflets. A. tricuspidata, better known as A. Veitchii, a more recent introduction (1868) from Japan, has smaller leaves very variable in shape; it clings readily to stone or brick work by means of suckers at the ends of the branched tendrils.
AMPÈRE, ANDRÉ MARIE (1775–1836), French physicist, was born at Polémieux, near Lyons, on the 22nd of January 1775. He took a passionate delight in the pursuit of knowledge from his very infancy, and is reported to have worked out long arithmetical sums by means of pebbles and biscuit crumbs before he knew the figures. His father began to teach him Latin, but ceased on discovering the boy’s greater inclination and aptitude for mathematical studies. The young Ampère, however, soon resumed his Latin lessons, to enable him to master the works of Euler and Bernouilli. In later life he was accustomed to say that he knew as much about mathematics when he was eighteen as ever he knew; but his reading embraced nearly the whole round of knowledge—history, travels, poetry, philosophy and the natural sciences. When Lyons was taken by the army of the Convention in 1793, the father of Ampère, who, holding the office of juge de paix, had stood out resolutely against the previous revolutionary excesses, was at once thrown into prison, and soon after perished on the scaffold. This event produced a profound impression on his susceptible mind, and for more than a year he remained sunk in apathy. Then his interest was aroused by some letters on botany which fell into his hands, and from botany he turned to the study of the classic poets, and to the writing of verses himself. In 1796 he met Julie Carron, and an attachment sprang up between them, the progress of which he naïvely recorded in a journal (Amorum). In 1799 they were married. From about 1796 Ampère gave private lessons at Lyons in mathematics, chemistry and languages; and in 1801 he removed to Bourg, as professor of physics and chemistry, leaving his ailing wife and infant son at Lyons. She died in 1804, and he never recovered from the blow. In the same year he was appointed professor of mathematics at the lycée of Lyons. His small treatise, Considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu, which demonstrated that the chances of play are decidedly against the habitual gambler, published in 1802, brought him under the notice of J. B. J. Delambre, whose recommendation obtained for him the Lyons appointment, and afterwards (1804) a subordinate position in the polytechnic school at Paris, where he was elected professor of mathematics in 1809. Here he continued to prosecute his scientific researches and his multifarious studies with unabated diligence. He was admitted a member of the Institute in 1814. It is on the service that he rendered to science in establishing the relations between electricity and magnetism, and in developing the
