and straight, and worn, contrary to the Roman fashion, on the right side, or sometimes in front of the body, as shown in the bas-reliefs found at Persepolis. Among the Persian nobility it was frequently made of gold, being worn as a badge of distinction. The acinaces was an object of religious worship with the Scythians and others (Herod. iv. 62).
ACINETA (so named by C. G. Ehrenberg), a genus of suctorial Infusoria characterized by the possession of a stalk and cup-shaped sheath or theca for the body, and endogenous budding. O. Bütschli has separated off the genus Metacineta (for A. mystacina), which reproduces by direct bud-fission.
ACINUS (Lat. for a berry), a term in botany applied to such fruits as the blackberry or raspberry, composed of small seedlike berries, and also to those berries themselves, or to grapestones. By analogy, acinus is applied in anatomy to similar granules or glands, or lobules of a gland.
ACIREALE, a town and episcopal see of the province of Catania, Sicily; from the town of the same name it is distant 9 m. N. by E. Pop. (1901) 35,418. It has some importance as a thermal station, and the springs were used by the Romans. It takes its name from the river Acis, into which, according to the legend, Acis, the lover of Galatea, was changed after he had been slain by Polyphemus. The rocks which Polyphemus hurled at Ulysses are identified with the seven Scogli de’ Ciclopi, or Faraglioni, a little to the south of Acireale.
ACIS, in Greek mythology, the son of Pan (Faunus) and the nymph Symaethis, a beautiful shepherd of Sicily, was the lover of the Nereïd Galatea. His rival the Cyclops Polyphemus surprised them together, and crushed him to pieces with a rock. His blood, gushing forth from beneath, was metamorphosed by Galatea into the river bearing his name (now Fiume di Jaci), which was celebrated for the coldness of its waters (Ovid, Met. xiii. 750; Silius Italicus, Punica, xiv. 221).
ACKERMAN, FRANCIS (c. 1335–1387), Flemish soldier and diplomatist, was born at Ghent, and about 1380 became prominent during the struggle between the burghers of that town and Louis II. (de Mâle), count of Flanders. He was partly responsible for inducing Philip van Artevelde to become first captain of the city of Ghent in 1382, and at the head of some troops scoured the surrounding country for provisions and thus saved Ghent from being starved into submission. By his diplomatic abilities he secured the assistance of the citizens of Brussels, Louvain and Liège, and, having been made admiral of the Flemish fleet, visited England and obtained a promise of help from King Richard II. After Artevelde’s death in November 1382, he acted as leader of the Flemings, gained several victories and increased his fame by skilfully conducting a retreat from Damme to Ghent in August 1385. He took part in the conclusion of the treaty of peace between Ghent and Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, the successor of Count Louis, in December 1385. Trusting in Philip, and ignoring the warnings of his friends, Ackerman remained in Flanders, and was murdered at Ghent on the 22nd of July 1387, leaving a memory of chivalry and generosity.
See Jean Froissart, Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869–1897); Johannes Brandon, Chronodromon, edited by K. de Lettenhove in the Chroniques relatives à l’histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne (Brussels, 1870).
ACKERMANN, JOHANN CHRISTIAN GOTTLIEB (1756–1801), German physician, was born at Zeulenroda, in Upper Saxony, on the 17th of February 1756, and died at Altdorf on the 9th of March 1801. At the age of fifteen he became a student of medicine at Jena under E. G. Baldinger, whom he followed to Göttingen in 1773, and afterwards he studied for two years at Halle. A few years’ practice at Stendal (1778–1799), where there were numerous factories, enabled him to add many valuable original observations to his translation (1780–1783) of Bernardino Ramazzini’s (1633–1714) treatise on diseases of artificers. In 1786 he became professor of medicine at the university of Altdorf, in Franconia, occupying first the chair of chemistry, and then, from 1794 till his death in 1801, that of pathology and therapeutics. He wrote Institutiones Historiae Medicinae (Nuremberg, 1792) and Institutiones Therapiae Generalis (Nuremberg and Altdorf, 1784–1795), besides various handbooks and translations.
ACKERMANN, LOUISE VICTORINE CHOQUET (1813–1890), French poet, was born in Paris on the 30th of November 1813. Educated by her father in the philosophy of the Encyclopaedists, Victorine Choquet went to Berlin in 1838 to study German, and there married in 1843 Paul Ackermann, an Alsatian philologist. After little more than two years of happy married life her husband died, and Madame Ackermann went to live at Nice with a favourite sister. In 1855 she published Contes en vers, and in 1862 Contes et poésies. Very different from these simple and charming contes is the work on which Madame Ackermann’s real reputation rests. She published in 1874 Poésies, premières poésies, poésies philosophiques, a volume of sombre and powerful verse, expressing her revolt against human suffering. The volume was enthusiastically reviewed in the Revue des deux mondes for May 1871 by E. Caro, who, though he deprecated the impiété désespérée of the verses, did full justice to their vigour and the excellence of their form. Soon after the publication of this volume Madame Ackermann removed to Paris, where she gathered round her a circle of friends, but published nothing further except a prose volume, the Pensées d’un solitaire (1883), to which she prefixed a short autobiography. She died at Nice on the 2nd of August 1890.
See also Anatole France, La vie littéraire, 4th series (1892); the comte d’Haussonville, Mme. Ackermann (1882); M. Citoleux, La poésie philosophique au XIXe. siècle (vol. i., Mme. Ackermann d’après de nombreux documents inédits, Paris, 1906).
ACKERMANN, RUDOLPH (1764–1834), Anglo-German inventor and publisher, was born on the 20th of April 1764 at Schneeberg, in Saxony. He had been a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, Paris and London for ten years before, in 1795, he established a print-shop and drawing-school in the Strand. Ackermann set up a lithographic press, and applied it in 1817 to the illustration of his Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, &c. (monthly until 1828 when forty volumes had appeared). Rowlandson and other distinguished artists were regular contributors. He also introduced the fashion of the once popular English Annuals, beginning in 1825 with Forget-me-not; and he published many illustrated volumes of topography and travel, The Microcosm of London (3 vols., 1808–1811), Westminster Abbey (2 vols., 1812), The Rhine (1820), The World in Miniature (43 vols., 1821–1826), &c. Ackermann was an enterprising man; he patented (1801) a method for rendering paper and cloth waterproof, erected a factory at Chelsea for the purpose and was one of the first to illuminate his own premises with gas. Indeed the introduction of lighting by gas owed much to him. After the battle of Leipzig Ackermann collected nearly a quarter of a million sterling for the German sufferers. He died at Finchley, near London, on the 30th of March 1834.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (from the old acknow, a compound of on- and know, to know by the senses, which passed through the forms oknow, aknow and acknow; acknowledge is formed on analogy of “knowledge”), an admission that something has been given or done, a term used in law in various connexions. The acknowledgment of a debt, if in writing signed by the debtor or his agent, is sufficient to take it out of the Statutes of Limitations. The signature to a will by a testator, if not made in the presence of two witnesses, may be afterwards acknowledged in their presence. The acknowledgment by a woman married before 1882 of deeds for the conveyance of real property not her separate property, requires to be made by her before a judge of the High Court or of a county court or before a perpetual or special commissioner. Before such an acknowledgment can be received, the judge or commissioner is required to examine her apart from her husband, touching her knowledge of the deed, and to ascertain whether she freely and voluntarily consents to it. An acknowledgment to the right of the production of deeds of conveyance is an obligation on the vendor, when he retains any portion of the property to which the deeds relate, and is entitled to retain the deeds, to produce them from time to time at the request of the person to whom the acknowledgment is given,
