AMHERST, a town and district in the Tenasserim division of Lower Burma. The town is situated about 30 m. S. of Moulmein. It was founded by the British in 1826 on the restoration of the town of Martaban to the Burmese, and named in compliment to the governor-general of India of that day; but in 1827 the headquarters were transferred to Moulmein. Amherst has been eclipsed in prosperity by the latter city, and is now merely a bathing-place for Moulmein.
The district forms a narrow strip of land between the Indian Ocean and the mountains which separate it from the independent kingdom of Siam. It has an area of 7062 sq. m. and had a population in 1901 of 300,173; it consists partly of fertile valleys formed by spurs of mountain system which divides it from Siam, and partly of a rich alluvial tract created by the great rivers which issue from them. The most important of these are the Salween and the Gyaing, formed by the junction of the Hlaingbwè and Haungtharaw rivers. The river highways bring down inexhaustible supplies of rice to Moulmein, the chief town of the district, as also of the province of Tenasserim. The district is subject to very heavy rainfall approaching 150 in. in the year, and has a uniform temperature of about 80° F. throughout the twelvemonth.
AMHERST, a village of Amherst township, Hampshire county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., in the central part of the state, about 7 m. N.E. of Northampton. Pop. of the township (1890) 4512; (1900) 5028; (1910, U. S. census) 5112. It is served by the Boston & Maine and the Central Vermont railways, and by interurban electric railways to Northampton, Holyoke, Sunderland and Pelham. The village is picturesquely situated on a plateau within a rampart of hills on the E. side of the Connecticut river valley. About 3 m. to the S. are the Holyoke Mountains (so called), while on the three remaining sides the land slopes to meadows, beyond which rise on the W. the Hampshire and Berkshire Hills, on the N. the Sugar Loaf Mountains and Mt. Toby, and on the E. the Pelham Hills, including Mt Lincoln (1246 ft.). Two small rivers (Mill and Fort) flow through the township. Amherst is a quiet, pleasing, academic village of attractive homes. It is noteworthy as the seat of Amherst College, one of the best known of the smaller colleges of the United States. Amherst Academy (opened about 1814, chartered 1816), a co-educational school at which Mary Lyon, the founder of Mt. Holyoke College, was educated, preceded the college (not co-educational), which was opened in 1821 and was chartered in 1825. It was originally a collegiate charitable institution, its basis being a fund for the schooling of ministers, and the charity element has remained very large relatively to other colleges. The principal college buildings are College Hall (1828); College Chapel (1828); the Henry T. Morgan Library; Williston Hall, containing the Mather Art Museum, the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and several lecture-rooms; Walker Hall, with college offices and lecture-rooms; Hitchcock Hall; Barrett Hall (1859), the first college gymnasium built in the United States, now used as a lecture hall; the Pratt Gymnasium and Natatorium and the Pratt Health Cottage, whose donors also gave to the college the Pratt Field; an astronomical observatory; and the two dormitories, North College and South College, supplemented by several fraternity houses. The natural history collections (including the very large ichnological collection of President Hitchcock, and Audubon’s collection of birds) are of exceptional richness. At Amherst is also the Massachusetts Agricultural College (co-educational; 1867) and experiment station (1887). Among the presidents of Amherst College have been in 1845–1854 and in 1876–1890 respectively—Edward Hitchcock, the famous geologist, and the Rev. Julius H. Seelye (1824–1895), a well-known educationalist. The township seems to have been first settled in 1731; it was incorporated in 1759 as a “district” (i.e. having all the rights of a township save corporate representation in the legislature) and in 1776 as a “town” (township). It was originally part of Hadley. Its name was given to it in honour of General Jeffrey Amherst (1717–1797). During the Shays’ Rebellion Amherst was a centre of disaffection and a rallying-point of the insurgents. Noah Webster lived in the village from 1812 to 1822, when working on his Dictionary; and Emily Dickinson and Helen M. Fiske (later Helen Hunt-Jackson, “H. H.”) were born here.
See William Seymour Tyler, A History of Amherst College (New York, 1896), and Carpenter and Morehouse, The History of the Town of Amherst (New York, 1896).
AMHERST, the county town of Cumberland county, and port of entry in Novia Scotia, Canada, at the head of Chignecto Bay and on the Intercolonial railway, 138 m. from Halifax. Pop. (1901) 4964. It is situated in a rich agricultural and mining district, and contains county and railway buildings and numerous mills and factories. It is the distributing centre for the surrounding district, and exports railway carriages, engines, boilers, stoves, &c.
AMHURST, NICHOLAS (1697–1742), English poet and political writer, was born at Marden, Kent, on the 16th of October 1697. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School, and received an exhibition (1716) to St John's College, Oxford. In 1719 he was expelled from the university, ostensibly for his irregularities of conduct, but in reality, according to his own account, because of his whig principles, which were sufficiently evident in a congratulatory epistle to Addison, in Protestant Popery; or the Convocation (1718), an attack on the opponents of Bishop Hoadly, and in The Protestant Session . . . by a member of the Constitution Club at Oxford (1719), addressed to James, first Earl Stanhope, and printed anonymously, but doubtless by Amhurst. He had satirized Oxford morals in Strephon’s Revenge; a Satire on the Oxford Toasts (1718), and he attacked from time to time the administration of the university and its principal members. An old Oxford custom on public occasions permitted some person to deliver from the rostrum a humorous, satirical speech, full of university scandal. This orator was known as Terrae filius. In 1721 Amhurst produced a series of bi-weekly satirical papers under this name, which ran for seven months and incidentally provides much curious information. These publications were reprinted in 1726 in two volumes as Terrae Filius; or the secret history of the University of Oxford; in several essays. . . . He collected his poems in 1720, and wrote another university satire, Oculus Britanniae, in 1724. On leaving Oxford for London he became a prominent pamphleteer on the opposition side. On the 5th of December 1726 he issued the first number of the Craftsman, a weekly periodical, which he conducted under the pseudonym of Caleb D’Anvers. The paper contributed largely to the final overthrow of Sir Robert Walpole’s government, and reached a circulation of 10,000 copies. For this success Amhurst’s editorship was not perhaps chiefly responsible. It was the organ of Lord Bolingbroke and William Pulteney, the latter of whom was a frequent and caustic contributor. In 1737 an imaginary letter from Colley Cibber was inserted, in which he was made to suggest that many plays by Shakespeare and the older dramatists contained passages which might be regarded as seditious. He therefore desired to be appointed censor of all plays brought on the stage. This was regarded as a “suspected” libel, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the printer. Amhurst surrendered himself instead, and suffered a short imprisonment. On the overthrow of the government in 1742 the opposition leaders did nothing for the useful editor of the Craftsman, and this neglect is said to have hastened Amhurst’s death, which took place at Twickenham on the 27th of April 1742.
AMIANTHUS, a corruption of amiantus (Gr. ἀμίαντος, undefiled), a name applied to the finer kinds of asbestos (q.v.), in consequence, it is said, of the mineral being unaffected by fire. Some of the finest amianthus, with long silky flexible fibres, occurs in the district of the Tarentaise in Savoy. According to Dr J. W. Evans, the ancient amianthus, derived mostly from Karystos in Euboea and from Cyprus, was probably a fibrous serpentine, or chrysotile (now called locally παμπακόπετρα, or cotton-stone).
See Mineralogical Mag. (London) vol. xiv. no. 65 (1906), art. by J. W. Evans.
AMICABLE NUMBERS, two numbers so related that the sum of the factors of the one is equal to the other, unity being considered as a factor. Such a pair are 220 and 284; for the factors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 and 110, of which the sum is 284; and the factors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71, and 142, of which the sum
