Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/905

ally went back to stand trial. No serious action, however, was taken, probably because of the protection afforded him by the Earl of Warwick, who is supposed to have participated in the profits of Argall's ventures. In 1620 Argall was captain in a fleet which attacked the Algerine pirates in the Mediterranean. A year later he was knighted. In 1625 he was appointed admiral of an Anglo-Dutch fleet of twenty-eight vessels, which took Spanish prizes valued at over £100,000, and later in the same year took part, as commander of the flagship, in Cecil's expedition against the Spaniards.

AR'GAN (Ar. arjan) , Argnniu nitleroxylon. The common species of the order Sapotace;p. It is a low, s])iny evergreen tree, native of the southern parts of Morocco, and it bears an ovate drupe the size of a plum, dotted with white, and full of a white milky juice. The Moors extract from the fruit an oil known as '"argan oil," which they use with their food.

ARGAN, jir'giiN'. The hypochondriac in Moli&rc's Lc nirildflc ima<iiiin>re, who allows himself to be cozened by apothecaries even to the extent of forcing his daughter to receive the addresses of one. He is finall' effectively disillusioned and cured by his brother-in-law.

ARGAND, iir'g'ind. Fr. pron. iir'giiN', AiMfi (175.5-1803). The inventor of the well-known Argand burner. The chief difficulty that at- tended the use of lamps as a source of light be- fore Argand introduced his invention, consisted in procuring complete combustion of the oil, so as to keep the flame from smoking. The round thick column of oil-vapor rising from the wick of an old-fashioned lamp presented an insufficient extent of surface to the air: a large proportion of the carbon of the oil, therefore, not reached by the air, remained unburnt and ascended in the form of smoke. Argand's improvement con- sisted in making the wick ring-shaped. The

flame procured by means of a circular wick has naturally the form of a hollow cylinder, with a current of air ascending through the inside, so that the burning surface is doubled. Even when supplied with this form of burner, how- ever, the lamp remained unsatisfactory until Argand's yovmger brother accidentally discov- ered the efl'ect of the glass chimney, by which the flame is steadied, a draught created, and thus the greatest possible amount of light pro- duced. The Argand burner is now extensively used in gas-lighting.

ARGANTE, ar'gii.xt'. (I ) A witty portrait in Molifere's gallery of dupes — the father who, in />c.s foiirheries dc .SVop/n, is trickily per- suaded by Scapin to give up his own plans in favor of those of his son and daughter. (2) A giantess typifying Licentiousness in the Faerie Quccnc, by Spenser.

ARGANTES, ar-gan'tez. A fierce Circassian. the bravest of the inlidel warriors, in Tasso's ".Icnisalciu Delivered."

ARGAO, ar-ga'6. A town of Cebu, Philip- pines, situated about .33 miles southwest of Cebu. Population (official estimate), 1898, 34,050.

ARGEL, ar'gel, or ARGHEL (Syrian), .Vo/e- iiijsleiiiDia urgel. A plant of the natural or-

ler Asrleiiiiidncttr, a native of Arabia and of

the north of Africa, deserving of notice because of the frequent use of its leaves for the adultera- tion of senna. They are lanceolate and leathery, and may readily be distinguished from genuine senna leaves by their te.xture, their being downy, their greater heaviness, the comparative absence of veins, and the symmetry of their sides, the sides of the true senna leaves being unequal. They are acrid, and cause sickness and griping; but a difference of opinion prevails as to their possessing purgative properties.

ARGELANDER, iir'ge-litn'der, Friedricii VViLiiELM Aruu.sT (1799-1875). One of the nost eminent German astronomers of the Nine- teenth Century. He was born at Memel, Prus- sia. He studied at Konigsberg, where the political sciences first attracted him ; but he was subsequently drawn away to astronomy by the lectures of Bessel, by whom he was employed to make calculations and obser- vations. In 1820 he was appointed assistant to Bessel in the Konigsberg Observatory, and in 1823 succeeded Walbeck as astronomer at the obser-atory of Abo, in Finland. Here he be- gan a series of observations on the fixed stars which have a perceptible "proper motion." His studies were unfortunately interrupted by a fire which destroyed the observatory; but after a time he resimied them in a new observa- tory at Helsingfors, and published a catalogue of not less than 560 stars having "proper mo- tions." This contained the results of his ob- servations at Abo, and received from the Acad- emy of Saint Petersburg the DemidofT Prize. In 1837 he was invited to fill the chair of astron- omy at the University of Bonn. Argelander was long engaged in a series of observations on the changes of light in variable stars, and he also added to our ideas concerning the progres- sive motion of the solar system in space. Arge- lander's works include: Observntiones Astro- noyniccF in Speculce'Universitatis Fennico Factw (3 vols., Helsingfors, 1830-32) ; Neue Ura- nomctric (Berlin, 1843), containing eighteen celestial charts of fixed stars seen with the naked eye: Mittlere Oerter i'Oh 33,811 Stenicn (Bonn, 18C7) ; and a few others of considerable importance. His greatest work, however, is the Atlas des nijrdlichen gestirnten Himmeh (Bonn, 1857), with a Sternverzeichnis (Bonn, 1859-62, Vols. III.-V of the Astroiiomische Beobachtungen auf der Hternwarte zu Bont>)- This work contains an enormous number of ob- servations carried out by Argelander and his assistants during the nine years from 1852 to 1801.

ARGEMO'NE (Lat., an herb, Gk. apyefiuvt), argemOne, a kind of poppy). A genus of plants of the natural order Papaveraceoe, distinguished by four to six petals, four to seven radiating concave stigmas, and an obovate capsule, open-