t is being parcelled out by European nations,
chiefly Britain, France, and Germany, and with more zeal and appliance of
resource by Britain than any other.

AFRICA`NUS, JULIUS, a Christian historian and chronologist of the
3rd century.

AFRIDIS, a treacherous tribe of eight clans, often at war with each
other, in a mountainous region on the North-Western frontier of India W.
of Peshawar.

AFRIKAN`DER, one born in S. Africa of European parents.

AFRIT`, a powerful evil spirit in the Mohammedan mythology.

AGA`DES, a once important depot of trade in the S. of the Sahara,
much decayed.

AGAG, a king of the Amalekites, conquered by Saul, and hewn in
pieces by order of Samuel.

AGAMEM`NON, a son of Atreus, king of Mycenae and general-in-chief of
the Greeks in the Trojan war, represented as a man of stately presence
and a proud spirit. On the advice of the soothsayer Calchas sacrificed
his daughter IPHIGENIA (q. v.) for the success of the enterprise
he conducted. He was assassinated by AEgisthus and Clytaemnestra, his wife,
on his return from the war. His fate and that of his house is the subject
of AEschylus' trilogy "Oresteia."

AGAMOGENESIS, name given to reproduction without sex, by fission,
budding, &c.

AGANIPPE, a fountain in Boeotia, near Helicon, dedicated to the
Muses as a source of poetic inspiration.

AG`APE, love-feasts among the primitive Christians in commemoration
of the Last Supper, and in which they gave each other the kiss of peace
as token of Christian brotherhood.

AGAR-AGAR, a gum extracted from a sea-weed, used in bacteriological
investigations.

AGA`SIAS, a sculptor of Ephesus, famous for his statue of the
"Gladiator."

AGASS`IZ, a celebrated Swiss naturalist, in the department
especially of ichthyology, and in connection with the glaciers; settled
as a professor of zoology and geology in the United States in 1846
(1807-1873).

AG`ATHE, ST., a Sicilian virgin who suffered martyrdom at Palermo
under Decius in 251; represented in art as crowned with a long veil and
bearing a pair of shears, the instruments with which her breast were cut
off. Festival, Feb. 5.

AGA`THIAS, a Byzantine poet and historian (536-582).

AGATH`OCLES, the tyrant of Syracuse, by the massacre of thousands of
the inhabitants, was an enemy of the Carthaginians, and fought against
them; was poisoned in the end (361-289 B.C.).

AG`ATHON, an Athenian tragic poet, a rival of Eurip