three days after the fertilization of the egg, and is very minute and transparent. In August young specimens 112 to 312 in. in length have been taken in the Zuider Zee, and these must be held to have been derived from the spawning of the previous summer. There is no evidence to decide the question whether all the young anchovies as well as the adults leave the Zuider Zee in autumn, but, considering the winter temperature there, it is probable that they do. The eggs have also been obtained from the Bay of Naples, and near Marseilles, also off the coast of Holland, and once at least off the coast of Lancashire. The occurrence of anchovies in the English Channel has been carefully studied at the laboratory of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth. They were most abundant in 1889 and 1890. In the former year considerable numbers were taken off Dover in drift nets of small mesh used for the capture of sprats. In the following December large numbers were taken together with sprats at Torquay. In November 1890 a thousand of the fish were obtained in two days from the pilchard boats fishing near Plymouth; these were caught near the Eddystone. When taken in British waters anchovies are either thrown away or sent to the market fresh with the sprats. If salted in the proper way, they would doubtless be in all respects equal to Dutch anchovies, if not to those imported from Italy. The supply, however, is small and inconstant, and for this reason English fish-curers have not learnt the proper way of preparing them. The so-called “Norwegian anchovies” imported into England in little wooden kegs are nothing but sprats pickled in brine with bay-leaves and whole pepper. (J. T. C.)
ANCIEN RÉGIME, The, a French phrase commonly used, even by English writers, to denote the social and political system established in France under the old monarchy, which was swept away by the Revolution of 1789. The phrase is generally applicable only to France, for in no other country, with perhaps the exception of Japan, has there been in modern times so clearly marked a division between “the old order” and the new.
ANCIENT (also spelt Antient; derived, through the Fr. ancien, old, from the late Lat. antianum, from ante, before), old or in olden times. “Ancient history” is distinguished from medieval and modern, generally as meaning before the fall of the western Roman empire. In English legal history, “ancient” tenure or demesne refers to what was crown property in the time of Edward the Confessor or William the Conqueror. “The Ancient of days” is a Biblical phrase for God. In the London Inns of Court the senior barristers used to be called “ancients.” From the 16th to the 18th century the word was also used, by confusion with “ensign,” i.e; flag or standard-bearer, for that military title, as in the case of Shakespeare’s “ancient Pistol”; but this use has nothing to do with “ancient” meaning “old.”
ANCIENT LIGHTS, a phrase in English law for a negative easement (q.v.) consisting in the right to prevent the owner or occupier of an adjoining tenement from building or placing on his own land anything which has the effect of illegally obstructing or obscuring the light of the dominant tenement. At common law a person, who opens a window in his house, has a natural right to receive the flow of light that passes through it. But his neighbour is not debarred thereby from building on his own land even though the effect of his action is to obstruct the flow of light thus obtained. Where, however, a window had been opened for so long a time as to constitute immemorial usage in law, the light became an “ancient light” which the law protected from disturbance. The Prescription Act 1832 created a statutory prescription for light. It provided (s. 3) that “when the access and use of light to and for” (any building) “shall have been actually enjoyed therewith for the full period of 20 years without interruption, the right thereto shall be deemed absolute and indefeasible, any local usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding, unless it shall appear that the same was enjoyed by some consent or agreement, expressly made or given for that purpose by deed or writing.” The statute does not create an absolute or indefeasible right immediately on the expiration of twenty years. Unless and until the dominant owner’s claim is brought into question (s. 4) no absolute or indefeasible title can arise under the act. The dominant owner has only an inchoate right to avail himself under the act of the twenty years’ uninterrupted enjoyment, if his claim is brought into question. But in the meantime, however long the enjoyment may have been, his right is just the same, and the origin of his right is just the same as if the act had never been passed. These principles were laid down in 1904 by the House of Lords in the leading case of Colls v. Home & Colonial Stores Ltd. (1904 A.C. 179). They overrule an earlier view propounded by Lord Westbury in 1865 (Tapling v. Jones, 11 H.L.C. 290) that the Prescription Act 1832 had abrogated the common law prescription as to light, that the right to “ancient lights” now depends upon positive enactment alone, and does not require, and ought not to be rested on, any fiction of a “lost grant” (see Easement). There has been much difference of judicial opinion as to what constitutes an actionable interference with “ancient lights.” On the one hand, the test has been prescribed that if an angle of 45°—uninterrupted sky light—was left, the easement was not interfered with, and, while this is not a rule of law, it is a good rough working criterion. On the other hand, it was held in effect by the Court of Appeal in the case of Colls v. Home & Colonial Stores Ltd. (1902; 1 Ch. 302) that to constitute an actionable obstruction of ancient lights it was sufficient if the light was sensibly less than it was before. The House of Lords, however, in the same case (1904 A. C. 179) overruled this view, and held that there must be a substantial privation of light enough to render the occupation of the house or building uncomfortable according to the ordinary notions of mankind and (in the case of business premises) to prevent the plaintiff from carrying on his business as beneficially as before. See also Kine v. Jolly (1905, 1 Ch. 480).
There is, in Scots law, no special doctrine as to “ancient lights.” The servitude of light in Scotland is simply the Roman servitude non officiendi luminibus vel prospectui (see Easement and Roman Law). The same observation applies to the Code Civil and other European Codes based on it. The doctrine as to ancient lights does not prevail generally in the United States (consult Ruling Cases, under “Air”).
ANCILLARY (from the Lat. ancilla, a handmaid), an adjective meaning “subordinate to” or “merely helping,” as opposed to “essential.” By Thackeray and some other writers it is also employed rather affectedly in its primary meaning of “pertaining to a maid-servant.”
ANCILLON, CHARLES (1659–1715), one of a distinguished family of French Protestants, was born on the 28th of July 1659, at Metz. His father, David Ancillon (1617–1692), was obliged to leave France on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and became pastor of the French Protestant community in Berlin. Charles Ancillon studied law at Marburg, Geneva, and Paris, where he was called to the bar. At the request of the Huguenots at Metz, he pleaded its cause at the court of Louis XIV., urging that it should be excepted in the revocation of the edict of Nantes, but his efforts were unsuccessful, and he joined his father in Berlin. He was at once appointed by the elector Frederick “juge et directeur de colonie de Berlin.” He had before this published several works on the revocation of the edict of Nantes and its consequences, but his literary capacity was mediocre, his style stiff and cold, and it was his personal character rather than his reputation as a writer that earned him the confidence of the elector. In 1687 he was appointed head of the so-called Académie des nobles, the principal educational establishment of the state; later on, as councillor of embassy, he took part in the negotiations which led to the assumption of the title of king by the elector. In 1699 he succeeded Pufendorf as historiographer to the elector, and the same year replaced his uncle Joseph Ancillon as judge of all the French refugees in Brandenburg. He died on the 5th of July 1715. Ancillon’s chief claim to remembrance is the work that he did for education in Prussia, and the share he took, in co-operation with Leibnitz, in founding the Academy of Berlin. Of his fairly numerous works the only one still of value is the Histoire de l’établissement des Français réfugiés dans les états de Brandebourg (Berlin, 1690).
