542 ANTACIDS ard's " Guide to the Study of Insects" (Salem, 1868 et seq. and Fitch's "Keports on the Insects of New York." ANTACIDS, certain drugs used to neutralize acid either in the alimentary canal or circula- ting in the blood. For the former indication, the carbonates and bicarbonates of soda and potassa, lime water, chalk, and magnesia with its carbonate, are used. The symptom which they temporarily relieve is, however, often more efficiently treated by regulated diet or by mineral acids. For the second purpose we have, besides the alkalies and their carbonates, including lithia, which is weight for weight the most powerful, the salts formed by them with acetic, tartaric, and citric acids. These acids, when in combination with alkalies, take up in the blood more oxygen, forming carbonic acid, which forms with the bases bicarbonates ; so that the alkalization of the blood is attained without the local gastric troubles which might attend the administration of the caustic or carbonated alkalies in equivalent doses. The acetate of potassa, or corresponding salts, are largely used in the treatment of acute rheuma- tism where they render the urine alkaline. They also considerably increase its quantity. ANTJ2, in ancient geography, a Sarmatian people, between the Dniester and the Don, a branch of the Slavic Venedro or Wends. Jus- tinian overcame them when he caught them in the Roman territory, and gave them new abodes on the other side of the Danube, that they might be a rampart against the Huns. From them Justinian took his title of Anticus. ANTJEIIS, a mythological giant of Libya, son of Neptune and Terra, a mighty wrestler, and invincible while he continued in contact with the earth. Whoever visited Libya was bound to wrestle with him, and with the skulls of the vanquished, who were all slain, he erected a temple to Neptune. Hercules overcame him by lifting him off the earth, and strangling him in the air. AM AM IDAS, a Spartan, who, at the end of the Corinthian war, was sent on an embassy to Tiribazus, governor of Sardis, to negotiate a peace with Persia. He succeeded, and the peace, concluded in 387 B. C., with the concur- rence of several Grecian states, was called after his name. It excited universal indigna- tion throughout Greece, for Sparta had sacri- ficed to the Persian monarch the general. inter- ests of Greece in order to gratify her jealousy of the Athenians and Thebans. On being sent again to obtain the promised subsidies from the Persian king, he was tricked by the ori- entals, and fearing the popular indignation at home, he starved himself to death. A MAR, properly Ant a rah, an Arabian prince and poet of the 6th century, author of one of the Moallakat, the seven poems suspended on the Caaba at Mecca. A copy of a work called "Antar," celebrating the exploits of the prince, is in the imperial library of Vienna; and in the catalogue of the books written by Von ANTARCTIC DISCOVERY Hammer there is some account of this ro- mance. The legends of his exploits appear to have been embodied in a book and consider- ably enlarged by Asmai or Osmay, at the court of Haroun al-Rashid. He appears to have been aided in this by Yohainah and Abu Obeidah. The copy translated by Mr. Terrick Hamilton, oriental secretary to the British embassy at Constantinople, was pro- cured at Aleppo, and is comprised in a smaller form than any other as yet sent to Europe. The voluminous work had, it appears, been curtailed of many of its repetitions and much of its poetry by some learned inhabitants of Syria, and was therefore called the Shamiyeh or Syrian Antar, in contradistinction to the original large work, which was called the He- jaziyeh or Arabian Antar. Though usually written in a continuous form, the story may very properly be divided into three parts. The 1st reaches to the marriage of Antar and Ibla; the 2d includes the period when the hero suspends his poem at Mecca ; the 3d comprises the death of Antar and most of his comrades and relatives. Von Hammer, who twice read through the original, declared it to be " more interesting than the celebrated 'Thousand and One Nights ; ' " and Sir William Jones says : " I have only seen the 14th volume of this work, which comprises all that is elegant and noble in composition. So lofty, so various, and so bold is its style, that I do not hesitate to rank it among the most finished poems." With the Arabs it is a standard work. It is certainly one of the most ancient books of Arabian lit- erature. Its language is uncommonly pure, equally remote from the harshness of the ear- lier or the conceits of the later authors. ANTARCTIC DISCOVERY. The ancient geog- raphers, among others the Greek Ptolemy, supposed a continent to exist near the south pole, and to extend to a great distance around it. On nearly all maps published before the middle of the last century, this continent is vaguely given as " Terra Australis Incognita." Captain Cook, by his second voyage, first threw doubt upon this theory. He was everywhere prevented by large masses of ice from reaching any high southern latitudes, and he could dis- cover no land. In the few cases in which he passed beyond the Antarctic circle he reached only 71 10' S. latitude. In 1819 the South Shetland islands were seen but not visited by Capt. William Smith, the commander of a mer- chant vessel, driven far to the south in trying to round Cape Horn. In 1821 Trinity land, lying S. of the South Shetlands, in about lat. 62 S., was discovered by Howell, an Englishman; Palmer's land to the westward of Trinity' land, forming a part of the same coast line, by Pal- mer, an American; and still further to the south and west the Russian Bellinghausen found Alexander's land. Weddell, the next English explorer, made no discoveries of land, but reached lat. 74 15' S. Enderby's land, lat. 67 30' S., long. 50 E., and Graham's
