Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/279

ALBRET ALBUMEN 255 the neighborhood of Vienna, Feb. 3, 1736, died in that city, May 7, 1809. He was a pupil of the organist Mann. In 1772 he was made court organist, a member of the academy of music, and in 1792 organist in St. Stephen's church in Vienna. Beethoven and Seyfried were his pupils in counterpoint. ALBRET, an ancient town and castle of Gas- cony, in a district of the same name, now in- cluded in the arrondissement of Mont-de-Mar- san, department of Landes. It gave the title of viscount and afterward of duke to an illus- trious family, of whom the most distinguished members were JEAN D'ALBRET, who became king of Navarre in 1494 by marriage with the heiress to the crown, and was dispossessed of the Spanish part of his territory by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1512; HENRI D'ALBRET, his son, king of Navarre, who was taken prisoner at Pavia in 1525 ; and JEANNE D'ALBRET (see ALBRET, JEANNE D'). The site of the town is now occupied by the hamlet of Labrit. 1LBRET, Jeanne d', queen of Navarre, born inPau, Jan. 7, 1528, died in Paris, June 9, 1572. She was the only daughter of Henry II. of Na- varre and Margaret of Angoul&ne, sister of Francis I. and wife of Antoine de Bourbon, with whom she succeeded on the death of her father to the sovereignty of Lower Navarre and B6arn. She was equally celebrated for her beauty, her intelligence, and her strength of mind. When Pope Paul IV. invested Phil- ip II. of Spain with the sovereignty of Navarre, she formally embraced Calvinism, toward which she had already shown a leaning, while her husband, a man of weak spirit and ignoble im- pulses, hastened to submit himself to the church, and accepted from Philip the lieuten- ant-generalship of the kingdom. He applied to the pope to annul his marriage, but died shortly afterward (1562) ; and Jeanne, despite the intrigues and menaces of Spain and Kome, retained her possessions. In 1567 she declared Calvinism the established religion of the king- dom. With her children Henry and Catharine, she joined Coligny at La Rochelle with a small band of Huguenots in 1569, and after the as- sassination of the prince of Cond6 was regard- ed as the only remaining support of the Prot- estants. She is extolled by D'Aubign6 and other writers for her influence over the Hugue- not soldiery. She reluctantly consented to the marriage arranged by Catharine de' Medici and Charles IX. between her son Henry (afterward Henry IV.) and Margaret of Valois, but died before the realization of her misgivings. She wrote both prose and verse ; and some of her sonnets were published by Du Bellay. ALBUCASIS, Bnlcasimos, or, properly, Abnl- casim, an Arabian physician, born near Cor- dova, died in that city about 1106. He is known only by his medical work, Al-Tasriff, the surgical part of which has been published hi Arabic and Latin (2 vols. 4to, Oxford, 1778), and constitutes the most valuable authority upon the surgical science of the Arabs. ALBIIERA, a village of Spain, situated on a river of the same name, in the province and about 12 ra. S. S. E. of the town of Bada- joz. It was the scene of a battle, May 16, 1811, between Beresford with about 30,000 British, Spanish, and Portuguese troops, who formed the reserve of the army then besieging the French in Badajoz, and Marshal Soult, with 23,000 men, who hoped by defeating the re- serve to oblige the British to raise the siege. The attempt was unsuccessful, and the British gained a decisive victory. ALBUFERA, the name of a lagoon near Valen- cia, on the E. coast of Spain. It is partly dried up in summer, and a resort for wild fowl, whose capture is a source of revenue. The lagoon, with an estate on its banks, was the domain of Godoy, the prince of the peace. Na- poleon created Suchet duke of Albufera, on ac- count of the victory obtained over Blake, and the capture of Valencia, Jan. 9, 1812 ; and the Spaniards afterward granted the revenues of this district to Wellington. ALBUMEN (from Lat. albv-s^ white, because the albumen of the fowl's egg, on being coagu- lated by cooking, turns white), an organic sub- stance, more or less fluid in its natural condi- tion, which is coagulated or solidified by the action of heat, alcohol, the mineral acids, and the metallic salts. The characters of albumen were first recognized in the transparent and colorless portion of the contents of the fowl's egg. When an egg is boiled and then opened, it is found to consist of two different portions ; namely, an internal portion or yolk, which is yellow, and an external portion, which is white. The external portion before boiling is transparent, semi-fluid, and nearly colorless; and the increased consistency, opacity, and white color which it assumes on cooking, are due to its containing as its principal ingredient the substance in question, which is coagulated under the influence of heat. The composition of albumen of the white of an egg is stated by Du- mas to be : carbon, 54-3 ; hydrogen, 7'1 ; nitro- gen, 15 '8; oxygen, 21 '0; sulphur, 1*8; of the serum, or thin part of the blood of man, 0'05 less of carbon, 0'19 more of hydrogen, 0'07 less of nitrogen, and 0'07 less of oxygen. The sulphur in the white of an egg, uniting with hydrogen, forms sulphuretted hydrogen, which tarnishes silver. Albumen is found not only in the egg, but in the blood, in the chyle and lymph, in the interstitial fluid of the muscles, and in the mois- ture of the serous cavities, as the pericardium and the peritoneum. In the blood, where it is most abundant, it is in the proportion of about 75 parts per thousand ; in the lymph and chyle, from 12 to 35 parts per thousand. It is coag- ulated by a temperature of 160 F., and when in tolerable abundance, as in the serum of the blood, the whole fluid, on boiling, becomes solidified or gelatinous in consistency. The presence of an alkali or an alkaline carbonate, however, in due proportion, will prevent this ; and after the albumen is once coagulated, the