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ADRIATIC SEA—ADULTERATION

least two-thirds of its foreign trade which, as regards sea-borne merchandise, is carried on through the port of Burgas (q.v.). The city manufactures silk, leather, tapestry, woollens, linen and cotton, and has an active general trade. Besides fruits and agricultural produce, its exports include raw silk, cotton, opium, rose-water, attar of roses, wax and the dye known as Turkey red. The surrounding country is extremely fertile, and its wines are the best produced in Turkey. The city is supplied with fresh water by means of an aqueduct carried by arches over an extensive valley. There is also a fine stone bridge over the Tunja.

Adrianople was originally known as Uskadama, Uskudama or Uskodama, but was renamed and enlarged by the Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138). In 378 the Romans were here defeated by the Goths. Adrianople was the residence of the Turkish sultans from 1361, when it was captured by Murad I., until 1453, when Constantinople fell. It was occupied by the Russians in 1829 and 1878 (see Russo-Turkish Wars).


ADRIATIC SEA (ancient Adria or Hadria), an arm of the Mediterranean Sea separating Italy from the Austro-Hungarian, Montenegrin and Albanian littorals, and the system of the Apennine mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges. The name, derived from the town of Adria, belonged originally only to the upper portion of the sea (Herodotus vi. 127, vii. 20, ix. 92; Euripides, Hippolytus, 736), but was gradually extended as the Syracusan colonies gained in importance. But even then the Adriatic in the narrower sense only extended as far as the Mons Garganus, the outer portion being called the Ionian Sea: the name was sometimes, however, inaccurately used to include the Gulf of Tarentum, the Sea of Sicily, the Gulf of Corinth and even the sea between Crete and Malta (Acts xxvii. 27). The Adriatic extends N.W. from 40° to 45° 45′ N., with an extreme length of nearly 500 m., and a mean breadth of about 110 m., but the Strait of Otranto, through which it connects at the south with the Ionian Sea, is only 45 m. wide. Moreover, the chain of islands which fringes the northern part of the eastern shore reduces the extreme breadth of open sea in this part to 90 m. The Italian shore is generally low, merging, in the north-west, into the marshes and lagoons on either hand of the protruding delta of the river Po, the sediment of which has pushed forward the coast-line for several miles within historic times. On islands within one of the lagoons opening from the Gulf of Venice, the city of that name has its unique situation. The east coast is generally bold and rocky. South of the Istrian peninsula, which separates the Gulfs of Venice and Trieste from the Strait of Quarnero, the island-fringe of the east coast extends as far south as Ragusa. The islands, which are long and narrow (the long axis lying parallel with the coast of the mainland), rise rather abruptly to elevations of a few hundred feet, while on the mainland, notably in the magnificent inlet of the Bocche di Cattaro, lofty mountains often fall directly to the sea. This coast, though beautiful, is somewhat sombre, the prevalent colour of the rocks, a light, dead grey, contrasting harshly with the dark vegetation, which on some of the islands is luxuriant. The north part of the sea is very shallow, and between the southern promontory of Istria and Rimini the depth rarely exceeds 25 fathoms. Between Sebenico and Ortona a well-marked depression occurs, a considerable area of which exceeds 100 fathoms in depth. From a point between Curzola and the north shore of the spur of Monte Gargano there is a ridge giving shallower water, and a broken chain of a few islets extends across the sea. The deepest part of the sea lies east of Monte Gargano, south of Ragusa, and west of Durazzo, where a large basin gives depths of 500 fathoms and upwards, and a small area in the south of this basin falls below 800. The mean depth of the sea is estimated at 133 fathoms. The bora (north-east wind), and the prevalence of sudden squalls from this quarter or the south-east, are dangers to navigation in winter. Tidal movement is slight. (See also Mediterranean.)

For the “Marriage of the Adriatic,” or more properly “of the sea,” a ceremony formerly performed by the doges of Venice, see the article Bucentaur.


ADSCRIPT (from Lat. ad, on or to, and scribere, to write), something written after, as opposed to “subscript,” which means written under. A labourer was called an “adscript of the soil” (adscriptus glebae) when he could be sold or transferred with it, as in feudal days, and as in Russia until 1861. Carlyle speaks of the Java blacks as a kind of adscripts.


ADULLAM, a Canaanitish town in the territory of the tribe of Judah, perhaps the modern ʿAīd-el-Mā, 7 m. N.E. of Beit-Jibrīn. It was in the stronghold (“cave” is a scribal error) of this town that David took refuge on two occasions (1 Sam. xxii. 1; 2 Sam. v. 17). The tradition that Adullam is in the great cave of Khareiṭūn (St Chariton) is probably due to the crusaders. From the description of Adullam as the resort of “every one that was in distress,” or “in debt,” or “discontented,” it has often been humorously alluded to, notably by Sir Walter Scott, who puts the expression into the mouth of the Baron of Bradwardine in Waverley, chap. lvii., and also of Balfour of Burley in Old Mortality. In modern political history the expression “cave of Adullam” (hence “Adullamites”) came into common use (being first employed in a speech by John Bright on the 13th of March 1866) with regard to the independent attitude of Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke), Edward Horsman and their Liberal supporters in opposition to the Reform Bill of 1866. But others had previously used it in a similar connexion, e.g. President Lincoln in his second electoral campaign (1864), and the Tories in allusion to the Whig remnant who joined C. J. Fox in his temporary secession. From the same usage is derived the shorter political term “cave” for any body of men who secede from their party on some special subject.


ADULTERATION (from Lat. adulterare, to defile or falsify), the act of debasing a commercial commodity with the object of passing it off as or under the name of a pure or genuine commodity for illegitimate profit, or the substitution of an inferior article for a superior one, to the detriment of the purchaser. Although the term is mainly used in connexion with the falsification of articles of food, drink or drugs, and is so dealt with in this article, the practice of adulteration extends to almost all manufactured products and even to unmanufactured natural substances, and (as was once suggested by John Bright) is an almost inseparable—though none the less reprehensible—phase of keen trade competition. In its crudest forms as old as commerce itself, it has progressed with the growth of knowledge and of science, and is, in its most modern developments, almost a branch—and that not the least vigorous one—of applied science. From the mere concealment of a piece of metal or a stone in a loaf of bread or in a lump of butter, a bullet in a musk bag or in a piece of opium, it has developed into the use of aniline dyes, of antiseptic chemicals, of synthetic sweetening agents in foods, the manufacture of butter from cocoa-nuts, of lard from cotton-seed and of pepper from olive stones. Its growth and development has necessitated the employment of multitudes of scientific officers charged with its detection and the passing of numerous laws for its repression and punishment. While for all common forms of fraud the common law is in most cases considered strong enough, special laws against the adulteration of food have been found necessary in all civilized countries. A vigorous branch of chemical literature deals with it; there exist scientific societies specially devoted to its study; laboratories are maintained by governments with staffs of highly trained chemists for its detection; and yet it not only develops and flourishes, but becomes more general, if less virulent and dangerous to health.

There are numerous references to adulteration in the classics. The detection of the base metal by Archimedes in Hiero’s crown, by the light specific gravity of the latter, is a well-known instance. Vitruvius speaks of the adulteration of minium with lime, Dioscorides of that of opium with other plant juices and with gum, Pliny of that of flour with white clay. Both in Rome and in Athens wine was often adulterated with colours and flavouring agents, and inspectors were charged with looking after it.

In England, so far back as the reign of John (1203), a proclamation was made throughout the kingdom, enforcing the