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ARBOR DAY 227 ARC took up the San Juan water boundary, decided in favor of this country by the Emperor of Germany; the Nova Scotia fisheries question; all Civil War claims outside of the "Alabama" claims; and finally the "Alabama" claims. In the Nova Scotia fisheries dispute Great Brit- ain was awarded £1,100,000 and in the third case £386,000. The Samoan dispute involving Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, was attacked in 1889 by the establishment of a joint commis- sion appointed by the King of Sweden in co-operation with the Chief Justice of Samoa. Complications arising ten years later, a joint high commission visited Samoa, and an agreement for the parti- tion of the islands was signed Dec. 2,1899. The Behring Sea fisheries dispute be- tween Great Britain and the United States was finally settled in 1896, the first commission having been established in 1892. The first award, mainly in favor of Great Britain, was rendered in 1893, but recognized the plea of the United States for the regulation of the seal fisheries and its^ proposals to that end. A second commission appointed in 1896 fixed the amount of damages due to Canadian sealers under the former deci- sion at $471,151. The next important question was the determination of the Alaskan boundary, which began in 1897, and was finally set- tled in 1899. Sealing disputes with Russia, arising out of the seizure of four American seal- fishers by a Russian cruiser in Bering Sea in 1891, were finally settled by ar- bitration in 1902, the decision being in favor of the United States with the enunciation of the principle that a war vessel has no jurisdiction over a vessel of another nation outside territorial waters. The Alaska boundary dispute was finally settled by a joint commission representing Great Britain and the United States in 1903. See Peace Movement; League of Nations. ARBOR DAY, a day set apart to encourage the voluntary planting of trees by the people. The custom was inaugurated by the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture in 1874, which recommend- ed that the second Wednesday in April annually be designated as Arbor Day, and that all public school children should be urged to observe it by setting out young trees. The custom has since been extended, till now nearly every State and Territory in the country has set apart one day by legislative enactment, or otherwise, for this purpose. The ceremony usually consists of planting shade or ornamental trees on the grounds 16 — Vol. I — Cyc of public or other school buildings. In Canada the first Friday in May is cele- brated as Arbor Day. ARBORICULTURE. See FORESTRY. ARBOR VIT^, literally the tree of life. (1) In botany, a name given to the trees belonging to the coniferous genus thuja. T. occidentalis, or Ameri- can arbor vitje, is a well known and valued evergreen. (2) In anatomy, a dendriform arrangement which appears in the medulla of the brain when the cerebellum is cut through vertically. ARBUTUS, a genus of plants belong- ing to the order of encacex (heath worts). A species, the A. unedo, or austere strawberry tree, is found, ap- parently wild, in the neighborhood of the Lakes of Killarney. It has panicles of large, pale greenish-white flowers and red JFruit, which, with the everg^reen leaves, are especially beautiful in the months of October and November. Trail- ing arbutus is a creeping or trailing plant (epigsea repens) with rose-colored blos- soms, found chiefly in New England in the spring. Commonly called May flower, or sometimes ground laurel. ARC, in geometry, a portion of the circumference of a circle, cut off by two lines which meet or intersect it. Its mag- nitude is stated in degrees, minutes, and seconds, which are equal to thosj of the angle which it subtends. Hence, counted by degrees, minutes, and seconds, the arc of elevation and the angle of elevation of a heavenly body are the same, and the two terms may be used in most cases in- differently. The straight line uniting the two extremities of an arc is called its chord. Equal arcs must come from circles of equal magnitude, and each must con- tain the same number of degrrees, minutes, and seconds as the others. Similar arcs must also each have the same number of degrees, minutes, and seconds, but they belong to circles of unequal magnitude. Concentric arcs are arcs having the same center. In mathematical geography, an arc of the earth's meridian, or a meridional arc, is an arc partly measured on the surface of the earth from N. to S., partly cal- culated by trigonometry. Such arcs have been measured in Lapland; in Peru; from Dunkirk, in France, to Barcelona, in Spain; at the Cape of Good Hope, and from Shanklin Down, in the Isle of Wight, to Balta, in Shetland. It was by these measurements that the earth was dis- covered to be an oblate spheroid. In electricity, a voltaic arc is a lumi- nous arc, which extends from one pencil of charcoal to another when these are