Abbott, John

STEVENS CABOT, brother of Jacob, was born at Brunswick, Me., Sept. 18, 1805, was graduated at Bowdoin in 1825 and in theology at And over in 1829. He wrote a number of popular historical works, of which the best known is his eulogistic History of Napo leon Bonaparte. D. at Fair Haven, Conn., June 17, 1877. Abbott, LYMAN, a nephew of the preceding, b. at Roxbury, 1835, graduated at N. Y. University in 1853, abandoned the legal profe ion for that of theology, and after filling two pastoral charges in the Congregational Church and serving for two or three years as General Secretary of the Freedmen's Commis i on, he relinquished the duties of the ministry in 1869, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. Among his chief writings are an elaborate life of Christ under the title of Jesus of Nazareth (1869); Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths (1870); and Morning and Evening Exercises (1871). In 1870 he commenced the editorship of the Illustrated Christian Weekly, and in 1876 of The Christian Union, now The Outlook. In 1888 he resumed his pastoral duties, succeeding Henry Ward Beecher as pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. He edited Beecher's sermons in 1868, and in 1883 published a sketch of the life of Henry Ward Beecher. In 1890 he published a series of Lowell lectures on The Evolution of Christianity. Abercrombie, JOHN JOSEPH, soldier, b. in Tenne ee, 1798; graduated at West Point, 1822; served in the Black Hawk, Seminole and Mexican wars, and in the civil war as brigadier-general of volunteers. Breveted brigadier-general, U. S. A., in 1865, and retired from active service. D. at Roslyn, N. Y., Jan. 3, 1877. Aberdeen', in South Dakota , a city, cap. of Brown co. The trade centre of a rich agricultural district. Has a water power from artesian wells, and various industries. Pop . (1898) 3,520. Aberdeen', in Washington , a town of Chehalis co, Lumbering and salmon fishing are important industries. Pop . (1898) 2,100. Ab/ernethy, JAMES, F. R. S. E., civil engineer, born at Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1815. From 1842 to 1852 he was surveying officer to the Admiralty, and reported upon many important engineering works. Hydraulic power was first applied by him in the working of lock-gates 208 tenance of the organism. These two physiological functions depend, as do all forms of vital activity, on the character of the physiological organs through which they come into play. 3. The physiological organs of the organism are either simple plastids (cytods or cells), or they are parts of plastids (e. g., nuclei of cells, cilia of protoplasm), or they are built up of numerous plastids (the majority of organs). In all these cases the forms and actions of the organs are to be traced back to the forms and actions of the individual plastids. 4. Plastids are either simple cytods (structurele bits of protoplasm without nuclei) or cells; but since these last have originally arisen from cytods by a differentiation of the inner nucleus' and the outer 'protoplasm,' the forms and vital properties of all plastids can be traced back to the simplest cytods as their starting-point. 5. The simplest cytods, from which all other plastids (cytods and cells) originally have arisen by heredity and adaptation, consist e entially and absolutely of nothing more than a bit of structurele protoplasm - an albuminoid, nitrogenous carbon compound: all other components of plastids have been originally formed secondarily from protoplasm (plasma products). 6. The simplest independent organisms which we know, and which, moreover, can be conceived, the monera, consist, in fact, while living, of nothing else but the simplest cytod, a structurele bit of protoplasm; and since they exhibit all forms of vital activity (nutrition, reproduction, irritability, movement), these vital activities are here clearly bound on to structurele protoplasm. 7. Protoplasm, or germinal matter ( Bildung toff ), also called cell-substance or primitive slime ( Urschleim ), is therefore the single material basis ( materielle Grundlage ) to which, without exception and absolutely, all so-called 'vital phenomena' are radically bound. If the latter are regarded as the result of a peculiar vital force independent of the protoplasm, then nece arily also must the physical and chemical properties of every inorganic natural body be regarded as the result of a peculiar force not bound up with its substance. 8. The protoplasm of all plastids is, like all other albuminoid or protein bodies, composed of four inseparable elements-carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, to which often, though not always, a fifth element namely, sulphur-is added. 9. The forms and vital properties of protoplasm are conditioned by the pecumanner in carbon has combined itself so as to form a highly developed compound with the three or four other elements named. Compounds devoid of carbon never exhibit those peculiar chemical and physical properties which exclusively belong to only a part of the compounds of carbon (the so-called 'organic compounds'); on this account modern chemistry has replaced the term 'organic compounds' by the more sig is that element, that indivisible fundamental substance nificant term 'carbon compounds.' 10. Carbon, then, which, in virtue of its peculiar physical and chemical properties, stamps the various carbon compounds with ABVA their peculiar organic character; and in chief fashions this protoplasm, the 'matter of life' (Leben toff) 50 that it becomes the material basis of all vital phe nomena. 11. The peculiar properties which protoplasm and the other component ti ues and substances of the organism derived secondarily from it exhibit, especially their viscid condition and aggregation, their continual change of matter (on the one hand their facile decomposition, on the other their facile power of a imilation), and their other 'vital properties' are therefore simply and entirely brought about by the peculiar and complex manner in which carbon under certain conditions can combine with the other elements. 12. The entire properties of the organism are therefore ultimately conditioned with equal nece ity by the physical and chemical properties of carbon, as are the entire properties of every salt and every inorganic compound conditioned by the physical and chemical properties of its component elements." See BIOLOGY, SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, .