improved by the Federal government; in 1907 the maximum draft that could be carried over the shallowest part of the channel was 14 ft. There is good farming land in the vicinity and Alpena has lumber and shingle mills, pulp works, Portland cement manufactories and tanneries; in 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $2,905,263. In 1906 the commerce of the port, chiefly in lumber, cement, coal, cedar posts and ties, fodder and general merchandise, was valued at $3,018,894. Alpena occupies the site of an Indian burying-ground. A trading-post was established here in 1835, but the permanent settlement dates from 1858; in 1871 Alpena was chartered as a city.
ALPENHORN, ALPHORN, a musical instrument, consisting of a natural wooden horn of conical bore, having a cup-shaped mouthpiece, used by mountaineers in Switzerland and elsewhere. The tube is made of thin strips of birchwood soaked in water until they have become quite pliable; they are then wound into a tube of conical form from 4 to 8 ft. long, and neatly covered with bark. A cup-shaped mouthpiece carved out of a block of hard wood is added and the instrument is complete. The alpenhorn has no lateral openings and therefore gives the pure natural harmonic series of the open pipe. The harmonics are the more readily obtained by reason of the small diameter of the bore in relation to the length. An alpenhorn made at Rigi-Kulm, Schwytz, and now in the South Kensington Museum, measures 8 ft. in length and has a straight tube. The well-known Ranz des Vaches is the traditional melody of the alpenhorn, which has been immortalized by Beethoven in the finale of the Pastoral Symphony, where the music is generally rendered by a
cor anglais (q.v.). Rossini has introduced the melody into his opera William Tell. Wagner, in the third act of Tristan and Isolde, was not entirely satisfied with the tone quality of the cor anglais for representing the natural pipe of the peasant. Having in his mind the timbre of the alpenhorn, he had a wooden horn made for him with one valve only and a small pear-shaped bell, which is used at Bayreuth (see Holztrompete). The Swiss alpenhorn varies in shape according to the locality, being curved near the bell in the Bernese Oberland. Michael Praetorius mentions the alpenhorn under the name of holzern trummet in Syntagma Musicum (Wittenberg, 1615–1619).
(K. S.)
ALPES MARITIMES, a department in the S.E. of France, formed in 1860 out of the county of Nice, to which were added the districts of Grasse (formerly in the department of the Var) and of Mentone (purchased from the prince of Monaco). Pop. (1906) 334,007. It is bounded N.E. and E. by Italy, S. by the Mediterranean Sea, and W. by the departments of the Var and the Basses Alpes, while its northern extremity forms a sharp angle between France and Italy. Its area is 1444 sq. m., its greatest length is 59 m. and its greatest breadth 4812 m. It is composed of the valley of the Var river (which is all but completely within this department), together with those of its chief affluents, the Tinée and the Vésubie. The region of Grasse is hilly, but the rest of the department is mountainous, its loftiest point being the Mont Tinibras (9948 ft.) at the head of the Tinée valley. Two singular features of the frontier of the department towards the east are only to be explained by historical reasons. One is that the central bit of the Roja valley is French, while the upper and lower bits of this valley are Italian; the reason is that those bits which are now Italian formed part of the county of Ventimiglia, and the central bit part of the county of Nice, which alone became French in 1860. The result is that the Italians are now unable to build a railway from Cuneo by the Col de Tenda and down the Roja valley direct to Ventimiglia. The other strange feature is that from near Isola in the upper Tinée valley southwards the political frontier does not coincide with the physical frontier, or the main watershed of the Alpine chain; the reason (it is said) is that in 1860 all the higher valleys of the Maritime Alps (on both sides of the watershed) were expressly excepted from the treaty of cession, in order that Victor Emmanuel II. might retain his right of chamois hunting in these parts. The department is divided into three arrondissements (Nice, Grasse and Puget Théniers), 27 cantons and 155 communes. It forms the bishopric of Nice (the first bishop certainly known is mentioned at the end of the 4th century), which till 1792 was in the ecclesiastical province of Embrun, then (1802) in that of Aix en Provence, next in that of Genoa (1814), and finally (1860) in that of Aix again. Its chief town is Nice. The broad-gauge railways in the department cover 56 m., including the line along the coast, while there are also 82 m. of narrow-gauge railways. The chief industries are distilleries for perfumes and manufacture of olive oil, of pottery and of tiles, besides a great commerce in cut flowers. To foreigners the department is best known for its health resorts, Nice, Cannes, Mentone, Antibes and Beaulieu, while other important towns are Grasse and Puget Théniers.
(W. A. B. C.)
ALPHA and OMEGA (Α and Ω), the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, corresponding to the Aleph and Taw of the Hebrew. They are used as a designation of Himself by the speaker in Rev. i. 8; xxi. 6; xxii. 13. The first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used in Rabbinic writings in a similar way. We find also “the seal of God is Emeth,” Emeth (truth) being composed of the first, middle and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. God is thus represented as the beginning, middle and end of all things (see the Jewish Encyclopaedia, s.v.).
ALPHABET (see also Writing). By the word alphabet, derived from the Greek names for the first two letters—alpha and beta—of the Greek alphabet, is meant a series of conventional symbols each indicating a single sound or combination of sounds. The ideal alphabet would indicate one sound by one symbol, and not more than one sound by the same symbol. Symbols for a combination of sounds are not necessary, though they may be convenient as abbreviations. In the writing of some languages, e.g. Sanskrit, such abbreviations are carried to an extreme; in most Greek MSS. also they are of very frequent occurrence. These contractions, however, may prove too great a strain upon the eyesight or the memory, and thus become a hindrance instead of a help. This was apparently the case in Greek, for though the early printers cast types for all the contractions of the Greek MSS. these have now with one consent been given up. A consonant like x can only be regarded as an abbreviation; it expresses nothing that cannot as well be expressed by ks or gz, both of which combinations in different situations it may represent (see X). No alphabet corresponds exactly to the ideal which we have postulated, nor if it did, would it continue long so to do, as the sounds of most languages are continually changing. Hence in the case of dead languages or past forms of living languages, it is often very difficult to define with precision what the sounds of the past epoch were. The study of the history of English pronunciation occupied the late Dr A. J. Ellis for a large part of his life, and the results fill five large volumes. The sounds which are most difficult to define exactly are the vowels; a great variety may be indicated by the same symbol. In the New English Dictionary no fewer than thirteen different nuances of vowel sound are distinguished under the symbol A alone. In English, moreover, the vowel sounds tend to become diphthongs, so that the symbol for the simple sound tends to become the symbol for that combination which we call a diphthong. Thus the long ī in ride, wine, &c., has become the diphthong ai, and the name of the symbol I is itself so pronounced. In familiar, if vulgar, dialects, A tends in the same direction. In the “cockney” dialect, really the dialect of Essex but now no less familiar in Cambridge and Middlesex, the ai sound of ī is represented by oi as in toime, “time,” while ā has become ai in Kate, pane, &c. In all southern English ō becomes more rounded while it is being pronounced, so that it ends with a slight u sound. In the vulgar dialect already mentioned, the sound begins as a more open sound than in the cultivated pronunciation, so that no is really pronounced as naou. It is clear, therefore, that the best alphabet would not long indicate very precisely the sounds which it was intended to represent. See Phonetics.
But the history of the alphabet shows that at no time has it represented any European language with much precision, because it was an importation adapted in a somewhat rough and ready fashion to represent sounds different from those which it represented outside Europe. Wherever the alphabet may have
