picture writing. (5) The Egyptian hieroglyphics, from which the Phœnician alphabet was derived.
The Egyptian hieroglyphic picture writing may be traced back, by means of inscriptions, for more than 6,000 years, to the time of the second Egyptian dynasty. Of the 400 Egyptian phonograms, about 45 attained an alphabetic character—that is, they either denoted vowels, or could be associated with more than one vowel sound. Out of these alphabetic signs our own letters have grown. The transition to a pure alphabetic writing was made when the Phœnicians rejected the unnecessary portions of the complicated Egyptian system, the ideograms, the verbal phonograms, and the syllabic signs, and selected from the 45 variant symbols of elementary sounds a single sign for each of the 22 consonants found in Semitic speech.
A knowledge of alphabetical writing must have been obtained by the Greeks from the Phœnician trading settlements in the Ægean as early as the 10th century B. C.
By the middle of the 6th century the Greek alphabet had in all essential respects attained its final development. About the 3d century B. C., the lapidary characters, corresponding to the capitals in Greek printed books, began to be replaced by more rounded forms, called uncials, while cursive forms were used for correspondence. Finally, between the 7th and 9th centuries A. D., the minuscules, which are the small letters of our printed Greek books, were evolved from a combination of uncials and cursives.
The Greek alphabet was the source, not only of the Latin, but of the other national alphabets of Europe. The Runes, which formed the alphabet of the Scandinavian nations, were based on early forms of the Greek letters, which, as Dr. Isaac Taylor has shown, were obtained about the 6th century B. C. from Greek colonies on the Black Sea, by Gothic tribes who then inhabited the region. In our own alphabet, the order of the letters does not differ very greatly from the Phœnician arrangement.
Our letters are named on the same principle as in the Latin alphabet. The vowels are called by their sounds; the consonants, by the sound of the letter combined with the easiest vowels, which, for convenience of utterance, precedes the continuants and follows the explosives.
ALPHEUS (al-fē´us), the principal river of Peloponnesus (Morea), rising in the S. E. of Arcadia, and flowing past the famous Olympia westward into the Ionic Sea. In its passage through Arcadia, a country consisting of cavernous limestone, it repeatedly disappears underground and rises again. With this fact was connected a remarkable myth. The river god Alpheus was said to have become enamored of the nymph Arethusa while bathing in his stream. To escape him, she prayed to Artemis, who changed her into a fountain, and opened up an underground passage for her to Ortygia, a small Sicilian island in the harbor of Syracuse. The river still pursued the nymph, passing from Greece to Sicily below the sea, without mingling his waters with it, and appearing in the spring that bubbles up by the shore, close by the fountain of Arethusa.
ALPHONSO. See ALFONSO.
ALPINE PLANTS, the name given to those plants whose habitat is in the neighborhood of the snow, on mountains partly covered with it all the year round. The mean height for the alpine plants of central Europe is about 6,000 feet; but it rises in parts of the Alps and in the Pyrenees to 9,000, or even more. The high grounds clear of snow among these mountains present a very well marked flora, the general characters of the plants being a low, dwarfish habit, a tendency to form thick turfs, stems partly or wholly woody, and large, brilliantly colored and often very sweet-smelling flowers. In the Alps of middle Europe the eye is at once attracted by gentians, saxifrages, rhododendrons, primroses of different kinds, etc.
ALPS, the highest and most extensive system of mountains in Europe, included between lat. 44° and 48° N., and long. 5° and 18° E., covering the greater part of northern Italy, several departments of France, nearly the whole of Switzerland, and a large part of Austria. The culminating peak is Mont Blanc, 15,781 feet high, though the true center is the St. Gothard.
The Alps in their various great divisions receive different names. The Maritime Alps, so called from their proximity to the Mediterranean, extend westward from their junction with the Apennines for a distance of about 100 miles; culminating points, Aiguille de Chambeyron, 11,155 feet, and Grand Rioburent, 11,142 feet; principal pass the Col di Tende, 6,158 feet, which was made practicable for carriages by Napoleon I. Proceeding northward the next group consists of the Cottian Alps, length about 60 miles; principal peaks: Monte Visco, 12,605 feet; Pic des Ecrins,
