little people, the last surviving fragment of two great empires, adopted Christianity at an early date and have maintained it against every persecution, under the Nestorian Patriarchate. See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 33-52; 35-60.

In World War.-The following is a brief summary of the part which was played by the AssyroChaldeans during the war-as put forward by their two official delegates to the Peace Conference. "On 18 September, 1914, at the instigation of Mr. Vedeniski, Russian Consul at Urmia, and of his military attaché, Colonel Andreviski, who had been officially instructed by their Government and its Allies to treat with our nation, the Assyro-Chaldeans, after a long discussion decided to reject the overtures made by representatives of the Central Powers and to join the ranks of the Allies. This action was to assure our autonomy at the end of the war. Our declaration of war was followed by an enthusiastic demonstration. Thousands of our future soldiers paraded the streets of Urmia, carrying Allied flags, before the French, Russian and American agencies. There exist photographs taken on this occasion by the heads of these agencies. The Russian authorities provided our men with 3,000 rifles of the Burdenka model. On the same day the German flag was pulled down and the flagstaff smashed. During the first three years of war, till the collapse of Russia, these men fought side by side with the Russians, under Cernizohov, Andreviski and Simonov, in many fierce combats. Meanwhile in Turkey the AssyroChaldeans of the mountain district of Hakkiari enjoyed a real autonomy. When war broke out, we realised that it was being waged by the great western democracies for the cause of civilisation and the liberty of oppressed peoples. Moreover, our brothers of Persia had already ranged themselves on the side of the Entente, despite all the pressure and promises of the Turks and Germans. Early in 1915, then, our nation in Turkey also threw in its lot with the Allies. Kurdish tribes, urged on by the Turkish Government, attacked us, but were driven off during May, 1915.

The Turks then sent regular troops to the aid of the Kurds; but, aided by our kinsmen in neighbouring districts, we were able to hold at bay, first the Governor of Mosul, Haider Bey, and then a second army of mixed regular and Kurdish bands, commanded by Djevdet Bey, Governor of Van (brother-in-law of the notorious Enver Pasha), advancing from the north. Outnumbered by ten to one, our forces withdrew in good order towards the Persian frontier, and, fusing with their kinsmen on the Russian front, continued the struggle. At the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution, a British General, and soon after Colonel Chardigny of the French Army, reached Urmia. They encouraged the Assyro-Chaldeans to continue the war against the Turks, replacing the Russians on the Turco-Persian frontier. The Russian troops were retiring homewards in disorder, leaving the whole front (extending from Serai through Bashkala, Deza, Oashnou to Saoutchboulak) to our sole defence. At the end

of 1917, Captain Gracey, as special envoy of the British Government, took part at Urmia in a meeting between the civil and religious chiefs of the Assyro-Chaldeans and representatives of the greater Allies. Among them were the Russian Consul, the American Vice-Consul, Colonel Caujol of the French Army, the Apostolic Delegate Monsignor Lentak, and several Russian generals and other French and Russian officers. Captain Gracey encouraged the Assyro-Chaldeans and confirmed the engagements made to him by Mr. Vedeniski regarding the autonomy which they would receive from the Allies if they continued the struggle. He further declared that the Allies were ready to accord them moral and material support, and to supply arms, munitions, money and officers. These guarantees were confirmed by the representatives of France, America and Russia. They were unanimously accepted by the Assembly, which decided to reorganise the Assyro-Chaldean army, with a view to replacing the Russian."Nedjib and Namik (New Europe, April 15, 1920, pp. 21-22). See also WORLD WAR: 1918: VI. Turkish theater: a, 9.

ASTELL, Mary (1668-1731), English author and educator. Proposed plan for a college for women. See WOMEN'S RIGHTS: 1673-1800.

ASTOLF, or Aistulf, king of the Lombards, 749-756-Laid siege in 756 to Rome, which was relieved by Pepin. See ITALY: 568-800; LOMBARDS: 754-774.

ASTON, Sir George (Grey) (1861- ), British general; served as brigadier general on the general staff in South Africa (1908-1912); commandant Royal Marine Artillery (1914-1917); led an expedition to Ostend (1914); in the secretariat of the war cabinet (1918-1919).

ASTOR, John Jacob (1763-1848), American merchant. In an attempt to establish the fur trade from the Great Lakes to the Pacific and thence to China and India, he founded Astoria on the Columbia river in 1811, which was later seized by the English. (See OREGON: 1808-1826; ST. LOUIS: 1819; WISCONSIN: 1812-1825.) Erected many buildings in New York City and founded the Astor Library, since 1895 part of the New York public library.--See also LIBRARIES: Modern: U. S. A.: New York Public Library; GIFTS AND BEQUESTS.

ALSO IN: J. Parton, Life of John Jacob Astor. ASTOR, John Jacob (1864-1912), American capitalist, inventor, and soldier, fourth of the name. Devoted himself to the management of his vast interests in New York; in 1898 commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the United States. Volunteered and served as a staff officer in the Santiago campaign; presented to the Government fully equipped mountain battery which did useful work before Manila. He invented some useful devices, notably bicycle brake, a pneumatic road improver, and a marine turbine. (See also INVENTIONS: 19th century: Piano.) He was drowned at sea at the sinking of the Titanic. See TITANIC.

ASTOR, Nancy Langhorne, Lady. Elected to House of Commons, 1919, on the Unionist ticket, being the first woman to serve in the British Parliament.

ASTOR, William Backhouse (1792-1875), son of John Jacob Astor.

Gift to Astor library. See GIFTS AND BEQUESTS. ASTOR, William Waldorf, 1st Viscount of Hever (1848-1919). Served in the legislature of New York state 1877-1881; United States minister to Italy, 1882-1885; moved to England, 1890, and in 1899 was naturalized. Created a peer, 1916; encountered much criticism in both his native and his adopted country.

ASTOR, Lenox and Tilden foundation. See LIBRARIES: Modern: U. S.: New York Public Library.

ASTOR OF HEVER, 1st viscount. See AsTOR, WILLIAM Waldorf.

ASTORIA, a city and county seat of Clatsop County, Oregon, situated on the Columbia river, 100 miles northwest of Portland; was founded by John Jacob Astor in 1811, although the Lewis and Clark expedition established Fort Clatsop there in 1805. See OREGON: 1808-1826; WASHINGTON STATE: 1811-1846.

ASTRAKHAN, the khanate. See MONGOLIA: 1238-1391; RUSSIA: Map of Russian and border states.

1569.-Russian repulse of the Turks. See RUSSIA: 1569-1571:

1918. In union with Soviet Russia. See WORLD WAR: 1918: VI. Turkish theater: b, 1.

ASTROLABE, an instrument used for the purpose of determining stellar, solar and lunar altitudes and consequently the latitude of the observer. The instrument was considerably improved by the astronomer Tycho, whose astrolabes

("armillae") resembled the modern equatorial. The mariner's astrolabe, the same instrument used by Columbus, which is modeled after those of the astronomers', was first constructed by Martin Behaim (1480), but later (1731) superseded by John Hadley's quadrant.

ASTROLOGY: Origin and history. "The first inhabitants of the world were compelled to accommodate their acts to the daily and annual alternations of light and darkness and of heat and cold, as much as to the irregular changes of weather, attacks of disease, and the fortune of war. They soon came to regard the influence of the sun, in connection with light and heat, as a cause. This led to a search for other signs in the heavens. If the appearance of a comet was sometimes noted simultaneously with the death of a great ruler, or an eclipse with a scourge of plague, these might well be looked upon as causes in the same sense that the veering or backing of the wind is regarded as a cause of fine or foul weather. For these reasons we find that the earnest men of all ages have recorded the occurrence of comets, eclipses, new stars, meteor showers, and remarkable conjunctions of the planets, as well as plagues and famines, floods and droughts, wars and the deaths of great rulers. Sometimes they thought they could trace connections which might lead them to say that a comet presaged famine, or an eclipse war."-G. Forbes, History of astronomy, p. 2.-"The oldest work which has come down to our day upon astrology is the Tetrabiblos, or Quadripartite of Claudius Ptolemy, which was written about A. D. 133; indeed, this work, as an eminent writer remarks, 'is the entire groundwork of those stupendous tomes in folio and quarto on the same subject which were produced in myriads during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.' Ptolemy, however, does not claim to have invented, or rather discovered, the principles of astral influence, but to have completed, as he says, 'the rules of the ancients, whose observations were founded in nature.' It is quite probable, however, that the science took its rise in Egypt. Sir Isaac Newton says that astrology was studied in Babylon seven hundred and fifty years before Christ. The science flourished in Persia in the time of Zoroaster, who was himself a star-worshipper; and to this day it is held in great repute in that country, as high as six million livres being paid to astrologers annually by the Persian kings. According to Pliny, who himself believed in stellar influences, Anaximander, the friend and disciple

of Thales, by the rules of astrology 'foretold the earthquake which overthrew Lacedemon.' The was in Greece, nearly six hundred years befor Christ. Anaxagoras, a famous philosopher of Greece, and preceptor of Socrates, is said to have devoted his whole life to astrology. Pythagoras. Plato, Porphyry, Aristotle, and the great Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, were all supporters of the doctrines of this ancient science. In Rome the science was equally popular at an early day among the most cultivated and enlightened. Among others who speak in its favor may be mentioned Virgil, Cicero, and especially Horace. Macrobius wrote a poem on astrology. The name of the most learned proctor of Rome, Nigidius Figulus, should not be omitted, as he was a most gifted philosopher and astrologer. In Arabia, China, India, and among the Buddhists, astrology was first established centuries before the Christian era; and even in Mexico traces of this ancient science are found on the ruins of massive temples and crumbling pyramids built by a race long since extinct." -E. H. Bennett, Astrology, pp. 2-3-During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries astrology had a strong hold on many minds, both of scientific thinkers such as Tycho Brahe and Kepler and of the common people. Its mode of thought was curiously interwoven with that of more recognized sciences and its influence is still recorded in modern language. But the acceptance of the Coperni can theory did much to discredit astrology and in England Dean Swift's famous satire, Prediction for the year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., was largely effective in turning popular opinion away from it. See also ASTRONOMY: Ptolemaic and Copernican theories; CHALDEA: Wise men of the East; MEDICAL SCIENCE: Medieval: 12th century; CHINA: Origin of the people.

Theory and methods. "It would be impossible to give even a brief history of astrology without mentioning the basis of the entire science--the zodiac. The zodiac is composed of twelve constellations, or star-groups, through which the sun ap parently passes in his so-called path around the earth. The fact that this ecliptic is formed by the motion of the earth, rather than that of the sun. was known to the Egyptians, to Pythagoras in 700 B. C. and to Plato in 400 B. C., though in 317 A. D. Lactantius, the preceptor of Crispus Cæsar. son of the Emperor Constantine, taught his pupil that the earth was a plane surrounded by sky, and warned the lad against accepting the 'wicked heresy of a round world.' . . . Planets are worlds revolving around the sun, they shine principally by the solar light which they receive and reflect into space. Their visible luminosity as compared with that of either the sun or the moon is inconsiderable and this fact has long been one of the strongest scientific arguments against astrology The recently discovered knowledge that the most powerful vibrations are invisible has to a great extent rehabilitated the ancient science. The plan ets being comparatively near the earth may be brought within range of observation by the tele scope, but this instrument has no apparent effect upon our knowledge of the stars, which are suns in infinitude and at such vast distances that draw ing them a few thousand times nearer our world does not make them appreciably clearer to our vision. Astrology teaches that each planet possess es its own specific vibration, and students learn the effect of the positions, relations and distinctive forces emanating from each body or group of bodies in the solar system, and recognize their influence upon the moral, mental and physical nature of mankind."-K. T. Craig, Stars of destiny, PP. 10, 65-66.-"The alphabet of astrology is simple.

It consists of the twelve signs of the zodiac and the nine planets, Neptune, Herschel [Uranus], Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. The rules to be observed are few. Each sign contains 30 degrees, and thus there are 360 degrees in the zodiac. Mars is most powerful in Aries and Scorpio, Venus in Taurus and Libra, Mercury in Gemini and Virgo, the Moon in Cancer, the Sun in Leo, Jupiter in Sagittarius and Pisces, Saturn in Capricorn, and Herschel in Aquarius. Neptune seems to delight in Pisces, but no sign has yet been accorded to him. When the planets are in the signs opposite to those in which they are powerful, they are very weak and unfortunate. ... A horoscope, or map of the heavens, contains twelve houses, of which the first, or ascendant, rules the personal appearance and temperament; the second wealth; the third brothers and sisters and short journeys; the fourth the father, property and condition at close of life; the fifth children, speculation and pleasures; the sixth servants and health, the seventh marriage, lawsuits and public enemies; the eighth death legacies, the ninth religion and long journeys chiefly by water, the tenth the mother and the trade or profession, the eleventh friends, hopes and wishes, and the twelfth private enemies, sorrow, and imprisonment. The position of the signs and planets as regards these houses at the time of any one's birth will show conclusively the good and evil fortune and the causes thereof that will befall him or her during life. The strongest houses are the first, tenth, eleventh, and seventh, and the weakest are the fifth, sixth and eighth. A map or figure of the heavens is erected as follows: First learn where and when the person for whom the horoscope is desired was born, and then after you have drawn the map with its twelve houses, find in an almanac or ephemeris for the year required the sidereal time for the exact moment of birth. place the signs and planets in the proper places, as shown by the ephemeris, always remembering to observe the correct latitude. The aspects can then be calculated and predictions made.”—J. Hingston, Gospel of the stars, pp. 38-42.

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ASTRONOMIA NOVA: Kepler's great work on astronomy. See ASTRONOMY: Ptolemaic and Copernican theories.

ASTRONOMY: Early history of. "The astronomy of Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians is known to us mainly through the Greek historians, and for information about the Chinese we rely upon the researches of travellers and missionaries in comparatively recent times. The testimony of the Greek writers has fortunately been confirmed, and we now have in addition a mass of facts translated from the original sculptures, papyri, and inscribed bricks, dating back thousands of years. In attempting to appraise the efforts of the beginners we must remember that it was natural to look upon the earth (as all the first astronomers did) as a circular plane, surrounded and bounded by the heaven, which was a solid vault, or hemisphere, with its concavity turned downwards. The stars seemed to be fixed on this vault; the moon, and later the planets, were seen to crawl over it. . . . Probably the greatest step ever made in astronomical theory was the placing of the sun, moon, and planets at different distances from the earth instead of having them stuck on the vault of heaven. It was a transition from 'flatland' to a space of three dimensions. . . . The Chaldæans, being the most ancient Babylonians, held the same station and dignity in the State as did the priests in Egypt, and spent all their time in the study of philosophy and astronomy, and the arts of divination and astrology. They held

that the world of which we have a conception is an eternal world without any beginning or ending, in which all things are ordered by rules supported by a divine providence, and that the heavenly bodies do not move by chance, nor by their own will, but by the determinate will and appointment of the gods. They recorded these movements, but mainly in the hope of tracing the will of the gods in mundane affairs. Ptolemy (about 130 A. D.) made use of Babylonian eclipses in the eighth century B. C. for improving his solar and lunar tables. [See ASTROLOGY.] Fragments of a library at Agade have been preserved at Nineveh, from which we learn that the starcharts were even then divided into constellations, which were known by the names which they bear to this day, and that the signs of the zodiac were used for determining the courses of the sun, moon, and the five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. We have records of observations carried on under Asshurbanapal, who sent astronomers to different parts to study celestial phenomena.... The Phoenicians are supposed to have used the stars for navigation, but there are no records. The Egyptian priests tried to keep such astronomical knowledge as they possessed to themselves. It is probable that they had arbitrary rules for predicting eclipses."-G. Forbes, History of astronomy, pp. 6-15.-"While their oriental predecessors had confined themselves chiefly to astronomical observations, the earlier Greek philosophers appear to have made next to no observations of importance, and to have been far more interested in inquiring into causes of phenomena. Thales, the founder of the Ionian school, was credited by later writers with the introduction of Egyptian astronomy into Greece, at about the end of the 7th century B. C.; but both Thales and the majority of his immediate successors appear to have added little or nothing to astronomy, except some rather vague speculations as to the form of the earth and its relation to the rest of the world. On the other hand, some real progress seems to have been made by Pythagoras and his followers. Pythagoras taught that the earth, in common with the heavenly bodies, is a sphere, and that it rests without requiring support in the middle of the universe."--A. Berry, Short history of astronomy, p. 24.-See also CHALDEA: Wise men of the East; HELLENISM: Science and Invention; and SCIENCE: Ancient: Egyptian and Babylonian, also Greek, Arabian; CHRONOLOGY: Solar chronological scheme of the Egyptians; Babylonian method; Basis of Hindu calendar; Use of astronomical constants.

B. C. 4th century. Aristotelian astronomy. "Only the second of the four books on the Heavens is devoted to astronomy. He considers the universe to be spherical, the sphere being the most perfect among solid bodies, and the only body which can revolve in its own space. . . . He holds that the stars are spherical in form, that they have no individual motion, being merely carried all together by their one sphere.

"Furthermore, since the stars are spherical, as others maintain and we also grant, because we let the stars be produced from that body, and since there are two motions of a spherical body, rolling along and whirling, then the stars, if they had a motion of their own, ought to move in one of these ways. But it appears that they move in neither of these ways. For if they whirled (rotated), they would remain [in] the same spot and not alter their position, and yet they manifestly do so. . . . It would also be reasonable the all should [move] in the same motion, and among the stars the sun only seems to de