observatory and a chemical laboratory. The university has since been removed to Helsingfors. Åbo remains the ecclesiastical capital of Finland, is the seat of the Lutheran archbishop and contains a fine cathedral dating from 1258 and restored after the fire of 1827. The cathedral is dedicated to St Henry, the patron saint of Finland, an English missionary who introduced Christianity into the country in the 12th century. Åbo is the seat of the first of the three courts of appeal of Finland. It has two high schools, a school of commerce and a school of navigation. The city is second only to Helsingfors for its trade; sail-cloth, cotton and tobacco are manufactured, and there are extensive saw-mills. There is also a large trade in timber and a considerable butter export. Ship-building has considerably developed, torpedo-boats being built here for the Russian navy. Vessels drawing 9 or 10 feet come up to the town, but ships of greater draught are laden and discharged at its harbour (Bornholm, on Hyrvinsala Island), which is entered yearly by from 700 to 800 ships, of about 200,000 tons.
ÅBO-BJÖRNEBORG, a province occupying the S.W. corner of Finland and including the Åland islands. It has a total area of 24,171 square kilometres and a population (1900) of 447,098, of whom 379,622 spoke Finnish and 67,260 Swedish; 446,900 were of the Lutheran religion. The province occupies a prominent position in Finland for its manufacture of cottons, sugar refinery, wooden goods, metals, machinery, paper, &c. Its chief towns are: Åbo (pop. 42,639), Björneborg (16,053), Raumo (5501), Nystad (4165), Mariehamn (1171), Nådendal (917).
ABODE (from “abide,” to dwell, properly “to wait for,” to bide), generally, a dwelling. In English law this term has a more restricted meaning than domicile, being used to indicate the place of a man’s residence or business, whether that be either temporary or permanent. The law may regard for certain purposes, as a man’s abode, the place where he carries on business, though he may reside elsewhere; so that the term has come to have a looser significance than residence, which has been defined as “where a man lives with his family and sleeps at night” (R. v. Hammond, 1852, 17 Q.B. 772). In serving a notice of action, a solicitor’s place of business may be given as his abode (Roberts v. Williams, 1835, 5 L.J.M.C. 23), and in more recent decisions it has been similarly held that where a notice was required to be served under the Public Health Act 1875, either personally or to some inmate of the owner’s or occupier’s “place of abode,” a place of business was sufficient.
ABOMASUM (caillette), the fourth or rennet stomach of Ruminantia. From the omasum the food is finally deposited in the abomasum, a cavity considerably larger than either the second or third stomach, although less than the first. The base of the abomasum is turned to the omasum. It is of an irregular conical form. It is that part of the digestive apparatus which is analogous to the single stomach of other Mammalia, as the food there undergoes the process of chymification, after being macerated and ground down in the three first stomachs.
ABOMEY, capital of the ancient kingdom of Dahomey, West Africa, now included in the French colony of the same name. It is 70 m. N. by rail of the seaport of Kotonu, and has a population of about 15,000. Abomey is built on a rolling plain, 800 ft. above sea-level, terminating in short bluffs to the N.W., where it is bounded by a long depression. The town was surrounded by a mud wall, pierced by six gates, and was further protected by a ditch 5 ft. deep, filled with a dense growth of prickly acacia, the usual defence of West African strongholds. Within the walls, which had a circumference of six miles, were villages separated by fields, several royal palaces, a market-place and a large square containing the barracks. In November 1892, Behanzin, the king of Dahomey, being defeated by the French, set fire to Abomey and fled northward. Under French administration the town has been rebuilt, placed (1905) in railway communication with the coast, and given an ample water supply by the sinking of artesian wells.
ABOMINATION (from Lat. ab, from, and ominare, to forebode), anything contrary to omen, and therefore regarded with aversion; a word used often in the Bible to denote evil doctrines or ceremonial practices which were impure. An incorrect derivation was ab homine (i.e. inhuman), and the spelling of the adjective “abominable” in the first Shakespeare folio is always “abhominable.” Colloquially “abomination” and “abominable” are used to mean simply excessive in a disagreeable sense.
ABOR HILLS, a tract of country on the north-east frontier of India, occupied by an independent tribe called the Abors. It lies north of Lakhimpur district, in the province of eastern Bengal and Assam, and is bounded on the east by the Mishmi Hills and on the west by the Miri Hills, the villages of the tribe extending to the Dibong river. The term Abor is an Assamese word, signifying “barbarous” or “independent,” and is applied in a general sense by the Assamese to many frontier tribes; but in its restricted sense it is specially given to the above tract. The Abors, together with the cognate tribes of Miris, Daphlas and Akas, are supposed to be descended from a Tibetan stock. They are a quarrelsome and sulky race, violently divided in their political relations. In former times they committed frequent raids upon the plains of Assam, and have been the object of more than one retaliatory expedition by the British government. In 1893–94 occurred the first Bor Abor expedition. Some military police sepoys were murdered in British territory, and a force of 600 troops was sent, who traversed the Abor country, and destroyed the villages concerned in the murder and all other villages that opposed the expedition. A second expedition became necessary later on, two small patrols having been treacherously murdered; and a force of 100 British troops traversed the border of the Abor country and punished the tribes, while a blockade was continued against them from 1894 to 1900.
See Colonel Dalton’s Ethnology of Bengal, 1872.
ABORIGINES, a mythical people of central Italy, connected in legendary history with Aeneas, Latinus and Evander. They were supposed to have descended from their mountain home near Reate (an ancient Sabine town) upon Latium, whence they expelled the Siceli and subsequently settled down as Latini under a King Latinus (Dion Halic. i. 9. 60). The most generally accepted etymology of the name (ab origine), according to which they were the original inhabitants (＝Gk. αὐτόχθονες) of the country, is inconsistent with the fact that the oldest authorities (e.g. Cato in his Origines) regarded them as Hellenic immigrants, not as a native Italian people. Other explanations suggested are arborigines, “tree-born,” and aberrigines, “nomads.” Historical and ethnographical discussions have led to no result; the most that can be said is that, if not a general term, “aborigines” may be the name of an Italian stock, about whom the ancients knew no more than ourselves.
In modern times the term “Aborigines” has been extended in signification, and is used to indicate the inhabitants found in a country at its first discovery, in contradistinction to colonies or new races, the time of whose introduction into the country is known.
The Aborigines’ Protection Society was founded in 1838 in England as the result of a royal commission appointed at the instance of Sir T. Fowell Buxton to inquire into the treatment of the indigenous populations of the various British colonies. The inquiry revealed the gross cruelty and injustice with which the natives had been often treated. Since its foundation the society has done much to make English colonization a synonym for humane and generous treatment of savage races.
ABORTION (from Lat. aboriri, to fail to be born, or perish), in obstetrics, the premature separation and expulsion of the contents of the pregnant uterus. It is a common terminology to call premature labour of an accidental type a “miscarriage,” in order to distinguish “abortion” as a deliberately induced act, whether as a medical necessity by the accoucheur, or as a criminal proceeding (see Medical Jurisprudence); otherwise the term “abortion” would ordinarily be used when occurring before the eighth month of gestation, and “premature labour” subsequently. As an accident of pregnancy, it is far from uncommon, although its relative frequency, as compared with that of completed gestation, has been very differently estimated by accoucheurs. It is more liable to occur in the earlier than
