monarch, Pul, a Babylonian, who took the Assyrian name, Tiglath-Pileser II. He made firm the conquests of his predecessors. In earlier times it had been conquest and spoil that formed the policy^ of the rulers; now the conquered districts were annexed and ruled by Assyrian governors, who saw to it that a fixed tax was sent year by year to Nineveh. Sargon, who was one of Assyria's great generals, was the leader of a successful revolt of the army against a weak prince. It was he who captured Samaria, in 722 B. C., and carried away 27,000 of its best citizens. Sargon's son, Sennacherib, ravaged Judaea, capturing forty-six cities, and besieged Jerusalem, where a pestilence, referred to in the Bible, attacked his army and saved the city. In 681 B. C. began the reign of Assyria's greatest king, Esarhaddon. He at once set on foot the war which resulted in the conquest of Egypt, and which placed the ancient world for twenty years under one rule, thus giving the world the idea of a universal empire. Under Esarhaddon and his son, Asurbanipal (called by the Greeks Sardanapalus), the kingdom in 650 B. C. reached its height. Afterward revolts took place which slowly ruined it.
The modern area of Assyria (Mesopotamia), in Turkey in Asia, comprises the vilayet of Mosul (area 35,130 square miles; population 500,000), Baghdad (area 54,540 square miles; population estimated at 900,000); and Busra (area 53,580 square miles; population 600,000). The town of Mosul on the Tigris is close to the ruins of Nineveh and 220 miles by water (R. Tigris) north of Baghdad. Busra or Basra contains the town of Korna, where the Tigris and Euphrates join their waters, at the southern end of the ancient dominions of Assyria and then find their way by the Shat-el-Arab southward into the Persian Gulf. Northwest of Korna or Kurna and south of Baghdad is the town of Hillah, on the Euphrates, near the ruins of ancient Babylon and the Arab vilayet from which many Babylonian records have in our modern day been shipped.
Astar'te or Ashtoreth. An ancient oriental deity, supposed to be the moon-goddess, as Baal was the sun-god. She is mentioned several times in the Old Testament (I Kings XI: 5-33: II Kings XIII: 13). King Solomon built an altar to her. She was sometimes represented as having four wings and bearing a dove in one hand. She was worshipped by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Sicilians and by the inhabitants of Cypus.
As'ter, a flowering plant of the thistle family, found largely in North America, some species to be found in most regions of the globe. The word means star. In England they are called Michaelmas and Christmas daisies, because they have heads like daisies and when the weather is mild they bloom as late as those periods of the year, One variety grows at a considerable height on the mountains of Europe. The wild asters of the United States are many and beautiful, there being over a hundred native species. Several months of the year they clothe the land in royal bloom, a large part of the glory of the American autumn. The aster has been suggested as the national flower, its range is so general and it blooms so profusely.
"And everywhere the purple asters nod
And bend and wave and flit."
The purple or blue asters are very numerous, ranging from the low-growing seaside aster to the tall New England aster, sometimes reaching eight feet in height. The golden aster seeks the dry roadside, white asters grow in open wood and field and by shady roadside, an abundance of tiny flowers crowning high, wide-spreading branches. A variety of the Chinese aster, having beautifully colored florets of rose, violet, and white, is called Reine Marguerite.
As'teroids, a series of small planets, sometimes called minor planets, which revolve about the sun in periods varying from three to eight years. More than 500 of these bodies have been discovered, all having orbits lying in the space between Mars and Jupiter. Practically all of these planets are so small they can be seen only with a telescope; though Vesta, which is the largest, can at times be seen with the naked eye. Their diameters probably range between 10 miles and 400 miles.
In recent years many asteroids have been discovered by photography. If any portion of the sky is photographed witn a camera attached to a telescope, the fixed stars will appear as points; but if there be an asteroid in the field of the*, camera, its image will be a short straight line, for it is moving among the fixed stars.
Of all known asteroids the most interesting are probably Ceres and Eros. Ceres was the first one discovered, having been detected by Piazzi, January i, 1801. Eros, discovered by Witt of Berlin, August 14, 1898, proves to be our nearest neighbor and promises to offer, by observations of its parallax, the very best of all methods for determining the distance from the earth to the sun. Since this distance is the standard of length for nearly all astronomical measurements, Witt's discovery of this planet must be ranked among the most important astronomical discoveries of recent years. The name asteroid is due to Sir William Herschel.
Astor, John Jacob, millionaire, the founder of the American Fur Company, was born in Germany, near Heidelberg, in 1763. A peasant's son, he went to London in his sixteenth year, and worked with
