text 1892, tr. and notes 1900); Idem, Martyrio de Abba Isaac
(Coimbra, 1909); Idem, Vida de S. Paulo de Thebas (Coimbra,
1904); Archdeacon Dowling, The Abyssinian Church, (London,
1909); and periodicals as under COPTIC CHURCH. (A. J. B.)
ACACIA, a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the family
Leguminosae and the sub-family Mimoseae. The small flowers
are arranged in rounded or elongated clusters. The leaves are
compound pinnate in general (see fig.). In some instances,
however, more especially in the Australian species, the leaflets
are suppressed and the leaf-stalks become vertically flattened,
and serve the purpose of leaves. The vertical position protects
the structure from the intense sunlight, as with their
edges towards the sky and earth they do not intercept light
so fully as ordinary horizontally placed leaves. There
are about 450 species of acacia widely scattered over the
warmer regions of the globe. They abound in Australia and
Africa. Various species yield gum. True gum-arabic is the
product of Acacia Senegal, abundant in both east and west
tropical Africa. Acacia arabica is the gum-arabic tree of
India, but yields a gum inferior to the true gum-arabic.
An astringent medicine, called catechu (q.v.) or cutch,
is procured from several species, but more especially from
Acacia catechu, by boiling down the wood and evaporating
the solution so as to get an extract. The bark of Acacia
arabica, under the name of babul or babool, is used
in Scinde for tanning. The bark of various Australian
species, known as wattles, is also very rich in tannin
and forms an important article of export. Such are Acacia
pycnantha, golden wattle, A. decurrens, tan wattle, and A.
dealbata, silver wattle. The pods of Acacia nilotica,
under the name of neb-neb, and of other African species
Acacia Senegal, flowering branch, natural size (after A. Meyer
and Schumann).
From Strasburger's Lehrbuch der Botanik.
is rich in tannin and used by tanners. The seeds of Acacia
niopo are roasted and used as snuff in South America.
Some species afford valuable timber; such are Acacia
melanoxylon, black wood of Australia, which attains a great
size; its wood is used for furniture, and takes a high
polish; and Acacia homalophylla (also Australian), myall
wood, which yields a fragrant timber, used for ornamental
purposes. Acacia formosa supplies the valuable Cuba timber
called sabicu. Acacia seyal is supposed to be the shittah
tree of the Bible, which supplied shittim-wood. Acacia
heterophylla, from Mauritius and Bourbon, and Acacia koa
from the Sandwich Islands are also good timber trees. The
plants often bear spines, especially those growing in arid
districts in Australia or tropical and South Africa. These
sometimes represent branches which have become short, hard
and pungent, or sometimes leaf-stipules. Acacia armata is
the kangaroo-thorn of Australia, A. giraffae, the African
camelthorn. In the Central American Acacia sphaerocephala
(bullthorn acacia) and A. spadicigera, the large thorn-like
stipules are hollow and afford shelter for ants, which feed on
a secretion of honey on the leaf-stalk and curious food-bodies
at the tips of the leaflets; in return they protect the
plant against leaf-cutting insects. In common language the
term Acacia is often applied to species of the genus Robinia
(q.v.) which belongs also to the Leguminous family, but
is placed in a different section. Robinia Pseud-acacia,
or false acacia, is cultivated in the milder parts of
Britain, and forms a large tree, with beautiful pea-like
blossoms. The tree is sometimes called the locust tree.
ACADEMIES. The word ``academy'' is derived from ``the
olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement,'' the birthplace
of the Academic school of philosophy (see under ACADEMY,
GREEK). The schools of Athens after the model of the
Academy continued to flourish almost without a break for
nine centuries till they were abolished by a decree of
Justinian. It was not without significance in tracing the
history of the word that Cicero gave the name to his villa near
Puteoli. It was there that he entertained his cultured
friends and held the symposia which he afterwards elaborated in
Academic Questions and other philosophic and moral dialogues.
``Academy,'' in its modern acceptation, may be defined
as a society or corporate body having for its object the
cultivation and promotion of literature, of science and
of art, either severally or in combination, undertaken
for the pure love of these pursuits, with no interested
motive. Modern academies, moreover, have, almost without
exception, some form of public recognition; they are either
founded or endowed, or subsidized, or at least patronized,
by the sovereign of the state. The term ``academy'' is
very loosely used in modern times; and, in essentials, other
bodies with the title of ``society'' or ``college,'' or even
``school,'' often embody the same idea; we are only concerned
here, however, with those which, bearing the title of academy,
are of historical importance in their various spheres.
Early History.---The first academy, as thus defined,
though it might with equal justice claim to be the first
of universities, was the museum of Alexandria founded at
the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. by the first of
the Ptolemies. There all the sciences then known were
pursued, and the most learned men of Greece and of the
East gathered beneath its spacious porticos. Here, too,
was the nucleus of the famous library of Alexandria.
Passing over the state institute for the promotion of
science founded at Constantinople by Caesar Bardas in the
9th century, and the various academies established by the
Moors at Granada, at Corduba and as far east as Samarkand,
we come to the academy over which Alcuin presided, a branch
of the School of the Palace established by Charlemagne in
782. This academy was the prototype of the learned coteries
of Paris which Moliere afterwards satirized. It took
all knowledge for its province; it included the learned
priest and the prince who could not write his own name,
and it sought to solve all problems by witty definitions.
The David of Alcuin's academy (such was the name that the
emperor assumed) found no successors or imitators, and the
tradition of an Oxford academy of Alfred the Great has been
proved to rest on a forgery. The academy of arts founded
at Florence in 1270 by Brunetto Latini was short-lived and
has left no memories, and modern literary academies may
be said to trace their lineage in direct descent from the
troubadours of the early 14th century. The first Floral
Games were held at Toulouse in May 1324, at the summons of a
gild of troubadours, who invited ``honourable lords, friends
and companions who possess the science whence spring joy,
pleasure, good sense, merit and politeness'' to assemble
in their garden of the ``gay science'' and recite their
works. The prize, a golden violet, was awarded to Vidal
de Castelnaudary for a poem to the glory of the Virgin. In
spite of the English invasion and other adversities the Floral
Games survived till, about the year 1500, their permanence
was secured by the munificent bequest of Clemence Isaure,
a rich lady of Toulouse. In 1694 the Academie des Jeux
Floraux was constituted an academy by letters patent of
Louis XIV.; its statutes were reformed and the number Of
members raised to 36. Suppressed during the Revolution it was
revived in 1806, and still continues to award amaranths of
gold and sliver lilies, for which there is keen competition.
Provence led the way, but Italy of the Renaissance is the
soil in which academies most grew and flourished. The
Accademia Pontaniana, to give it its subsequent title,
was founded at Florence in 1433 by Antonio Beccadelli of
Palermo and fostered by Laurentius Valla. Far more famous
was the Accademia Platonica, founded c. 1442 by Cosimo
de' Medici, which numbered among its members Marsilio
Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Machiavelli and Angelo
Poliziano. It was, as the name implies, chiefly occupied
with Plato, but it added to its objects the study of Dante
and the purification of the Italian language, and though
it lived for barely half a century, yet its influence as a
model for similar learned societies was great and lasting.
Modern Academies.--Academies have played an important part
in the revival of learning and in the birth of scientific
inquiry. They mark an age of aristocracies when letters
were the distinction of the few and when science had not
been differentiated into distinct branches, each with its
own specialists. Their interest is mainly historical, and
it cannot be maintained that at the present day they have
much direct influence on the advancement of learning either
by way of research or of publication. For example, the
standard dictionaries of France, Germany and England are
the work, not of academies, but of individual scholars, of
Littre, Grimm and Murray. Matthew Arnold's plea for an
English academy of letters to save his countrymen from
the note of vulgarity and provinciality has met with no
response. Academies have been supplanted, socially by the
modern club, and intellectually by societies devoted to
special branches of science. Those that survive from the past
serve, like the Heralds' College, to set an official stamp
on literary and scientific merit. The principal academies
of Europe, past and present, may be dealt with in various
classes, according to the subjects to which they are devoted.
I. SCIENTIFIC ACADEMIES Austria.---The Kaiserliche Akademie
der Wissenschaften at Vienna, originally projected by Leibnitz,
was founded by the emperor Ferdinand I. in 1846, and has two
classes---mathematics and natural science, and history and philology.
Belgium and the Netherlands.-A literary society was founded at
Brussels in 1769 by Count Cobenzl, the prime minister of Maria
Theresa, which after various changes of name and constitution
became in 1816 the Academie imperiale et royale des
sciences et belles-lettres, under the patronage of William
I. of the Netherlands. It has devoted itself principally to
natural history and antiquities. The Royal Institute of the
Low Countries was founded in 1808 by King Louis Bonaparte.
It was replaced in 1851 by the Royal Academy of Sciences at
Amsterdam, to which in 1856 a literary section was added.
Denmark.---The Kongelige danske videnskabernes selskab
(Royal Academy of Sciences) at Copenhagen owes its origin
to Christian VI., who in 1742 invited six Danish numismatists
to arrange his cabinet of medals. Historians and antiquaries
were called in to assist at the sittings, and the commission
developed into a sort of learned club. The king took it
under his protection, enlarged its scope by the addition
of natural history, physics and mathematics, and in 1743
constituted it a royal academy with an endowment fund.
France.---The old Academie des sciences had the same
origin as the more celebrated Academie francaise. A
number of men of science had for some thirty years met
together, first at the house of P. Marsenne, then at that of
Montmort, a member of the Council of State, afterwards at
that of Melchisedec Thevenot, the learned traveller. It
included Descartes, Gassendi, Blaise and Etienne Pascal.
Hobbes, the author of Leviathan, was presented to it during
his visit to Paris in 1640. Colbert conceived the idea of
giving an official status to this learned club. A number of
chemists, physicians, anatomists and eminent mathematicians,
